FREEDOM'AND 
THE'CHURCHES 




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FREEDOM 

AND 

THE CHURCHES 

The Contributions of American Churches 
,\ to Religious and Civil Liberty . * . 



EDITED BY 

CHARLES W. WENDTE, D.D. 




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AMERICAN UNITARIAN ASSOCL\.TION 

1913 





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INTRODUCTION 

In the early part of the year 1913 a liberal 
religious congress was held in the city of Rochester, 
New York, one of whose features was a series of 
addresses by speakers of prominence in the Ameri- 
can religious community on the contributions of 
American Churches to religious and civil liberty. 

It has been thought that the interest and value 
of these papers warranted their publication. 

While they have been revised by their authors 
it is inevitable that they should in some degree 
retain the informality of extemporized addresses. 
This is, however, atoned for by the freshness, di- 
rectness and vigor of these utterances, in which 
the eminent services of American Churches to re- 
ligious and civil liberty find eloquent and convinc- 
ing expression. Professor Williston Walker, D.D., 
has kindly contributed a chapter to this volume 
in which the contribution of the Congregational 
Churches of the United States to the cause of re- 
ligious freedom is more fully exhibited. 

Charles W. Wendte. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I The Baptist Contribution .... 1 
Walter Rauschenbusch^ D.D. 

II The Congregationalist Contribution 11 
Williston Walker, D.D. 

III The Friends' Contribution ... 27 

O. Edward Janney, M.D. 

IV The Jewish Contribution .... 36 

H. G. Enelow, D.D. 

V The Methodist Contribution ... 46 
Lewis Marshall Lounsbury 

VI The Presbyterian Contribution . . 57 
Paul Moore Strayer 

VII The Reformed Church's Contribution 67 
WiUiam Elliot Griffis, D.D. 

VIII The Unitarian Contribution ... 82 
L. Walter Mason, D.D. 

IX The Universalist Contribution . . 92 
Isaac M. Atwood, D.D. 

X The Religious Radicals' Contribution 97 
Edwin D. Mead, A. M. 



THE BAPTIST CONTRIBUTION TO RE- 
LIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

Walter Rauschenbusch, D.D. 

The contributions which Baptists have made to 
theology have been comparatively small. They 
have always been strongest among the common 
people and have had less hereditary lodgment 
among the educated classes than, for instance, 
the Presbyterians and Congregationalists. Their 
strict biblicism has also hampered their theological 
freedom. They have been dragged in the wake of 
Presbyterian theology. On the other hand, their 
contributions to the religious and civil liberty now 
attained in the Western World have been im- 
mense. 

It is possible to use the term " Baptists " in a 
narrower and a wider sense. In the narrower, de- 
nominational sense, they are an offshoot of Eng- 
lish Congregationalism which has gained great 
numerical power in the English speaking nations. 
In the wider, historical sense they are part of that 
great democratic movement of modern Christianity, 
which began in the evangelical movements before 
the Reformation and made its first great stride to- 

1 



2 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

ward historical power in the Anabaptist movement 
of the Reformation. The Mennonites, the Dunk- 
ards and the Quakers belong to the same great 
stream of religious life in this wider sense. 

I shall speak first of the Continental Anabap- 
tists of the Swiss and German Reformation. 

The Reformation fractured the monopoly of 
the Catholic Church and broke the hypnotic spell 
of its infallibility. It lost its power to enforce 
uniformity and submission in large parts of 
Europe. But the Anabaptists were the radicals 
of the Protestant Reformation. 

The Reformers were against the pope and most 
of them were against the bishops. The Anabap- 
tists were against the entire clerical church. Their 
ideal was church democracy and lay Christianity. 

The Reformers pruned down mediaeval sacra- 
mentalism mainly in so far as it clustered around 
the Lord's Supper. They did not venture to ap- 
ply the same principles to' infant baptism. Since 
baptism is the rite of initiation into the church, 
any fundamental change in baptism involved a 
change in the conception of the Church itself and 
a revolution as to its membership. The Anabap- 
tists alone risked that. 

Luther had refused submission to the old theo- 
logical authorities and leaned back on the Bible 
and human reason, but he reserved this privilege 
for himself and the theologians. The Anabaptists 
put the same spirit into the common man and 
thereby multiplied the centers of independence in 



THE BAPTIST CONTRIBUTION 3 

matters of religion. They carried the spirit of 
inquiry, of religious self-determination, into the 
masses. History is not made by the intellectuals 
alone. The decisive turns in history begin when 
broad masses of men are welded into unity of 
action by some new guiding principle. History 
is not made by writing pamphlets but by creating 
solid and stubborn social forces. Even if the Ana- 
baptists had never written a book about religious 
liberty, they created the fact of religious liberty 
and in time the world had to make room for that 
fact. 

The world at first refused to make room and un- 
dertook to whip these rebellious artisans into line. 
Their slaughter was enormous and unparalleled in 
history. Catholics and Protestants alike sought 
to suppress them. Their sufferings did not profit 
their own cause. Their movement was almost en- 
tirely crushed. But their passive sufferings did 
help the larger life in the long run. " By their 
stripes we were healed." 

In addition to their passive resistance they also 
made active literary protest against coercion in 
religion. Balthasar Hubmaier wrote the most re- 
markable plea for liberty of conscience produced 
in the sixteenth century. Some individuals in 
other bodies might arrive at the idea of toleration 
to all. With Baptists that was a necessary part 
of their conviction. A Baptist who does not be- 
lieve in religious liberty is an illogical Baptist, 
only slightly affected by his own principles, a case 



4 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

of atavism, a throw-back in religion. The essen- 
tial thing with them was not at all baptism, but a 
free church of believers. Baptism of adult be- 
lievers was simply a corollary. The essentia! 
thing was a pure, spiritual, and voluntary church. 
But infant baptism admits all to membership and 
makes a church of the regenerate in time impos- 
sible to maintain, as the " Half-way Covenant " 
in New England shows. But such a voluntary 
organization cannot use force to compel others to 
come in ; it cannot suppress dissent ; it cannot ex- 
act State support. This then lifts the whole 
church out of the realm of coercion into the realm 
of liberty. 

It is almost impossible for us to imagine how 
daring an experiment in freedom it was to create 
such churches. If the warden in some State's 
prison should to-day propose that all prisoners in 
all penal institutions be employed out-doors and 
put on their honor not to cross bounds, that might 
offer a fair analogy to the impression made by the 
proposal of the Baptists in the sixteenth century. 

Their faith in religious liberty was closely con- 
nected with faith in civil liberty. Since they 
fought for religious freedom, they necessarily de- 
sired free assembly, free speech and a free press. 
The creation of free religious bodies narrowed the 
realm of coercion in human society. It created 
protected areas of freedom where the soul could 
learn the art of being free, and for all who lived 



THE BAPTIST CONTRIBUTION 5 

in the atmosphere of rehgious freedom within the 
church, tyranny in civil life became less tolerable. 

Most Anabaptists were opposed to capital pun- 
ishment, to war, and to oaths. But these are 
simply the physical and spiritual means of co- 
ercing men by which the tyrannical State is held 
together. These distinctive characteristics of 
Anabaptism all turn against coercive government. 
Many of them also refused to hold any civil office 
because as magistrates they would be compelled to 
coerce others ; consequently they were always sus- 
pected of revolutionary designs and there was an 
uneasy feeling that somehow there was social dy- 
namite among them. 

The ordinary church historian sees only the Men- 
nonite sects as a slender continuation of the Ana- 
baptist movement. A larger historical vision will 
trace their historical continuity in the " Age of 
Enlightenment " in the eighteenth century and in 
the Social Democracy of the nineteenth century. 

I pass now to England. The Reformation in 
England, as we remember, was belated and did not 
gather full headway till the seventeenth century 
in the Puritan movement. Here again a radical 
wing arose which comprised the Independents, 
Baptists and Quakers who all stood for democracy. 
Catholics, Episcopalians and Presbyterians at that 
time might occasionally see the beauties of tolera- 
tion when they were themselves hard hit and op- 
pressed. But only few and rare utterances can 



6 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

be found from these sources. On the other hand, 
a number of publications advocating religious 
liberty issued from Baptist hands. The question 
is if any Baptist of that time can be produced who 
was not in favor of religious liberty. The reason 
for this difference in spiritual complexion is that 
liberty is an essential in Baptist principles. 

We all know that the Puritan revolution had an 
incalculable influence on the progress of civil and 
religious liberty. But the Independents, Baptists 
and Quakers were the advance guard of democracy. 
They were not during the revolutionary period 
sharply defined sects, but rather sections of the 
progressive movement. The " New Model " which 
was the center of initiative was filled with Inde- 
pendents and Baptists. The religious and political 
sympathies of every man were closely allied. Thus 
the permanent achievements of the Puritan Revo- 
lution were largely due to this radical group. 

After the restoration of the Stuarts, the Bap- 
tists once more had to champion the cause of free- 
dom by their suff^erings. The Quakers and Bap- 
tists glutted the jails. It was at this time that 
the Baptist John Bunyan was in Bedford jail. 
If all these people had humbly and supinely con- 
formed to the Anglican Church, it would have re- 
established its monopoly, and religious liberty 
would have had a sorry outlook in Great Britain. 
Its actual advance was achieved at every step by 
the active propaganda and resistance of the Non- 
conformist bodies. The " Non-Conformist con- 



THE BAPTIST CONTRIBUTION 7 

science " has also been one of the steady, con- 
structive forces making for civil democracy in 
England. 

I have time only for a brief reference to the 
influence exerted by Baptists here in America. 
The various churches which established themselves 
in the American colonies imported their traditions 
from Europe. They demanded religious uni- 
formity, suppression of dissent, and support by 
taxation as a matter of course. Neither the Puri- 
tans of Massachusetts nor the Cavaliers of Vir- 
ginia believed in rehgious liberty. The Catholics 
of Maryland were in so straitened a position that 
they were willing to gain toleration for themselves 
by tolerating others. The toleration existing in 
Pennsylvania was due to the influence of English 
Quakerism and German Anabaptism. Roger Wil- 
Hams was the one man to whom freedom was a reli- 
gion. As Saint Francis wedded the Lady Poverty, 
so Saint Roger wedded the Lady Liberty. Bap- 
tists have been somewhat too cheerful in claiming 
the glory for Roger Williams and Rhode Island. 
But there was a strong natural affinity between 
them. They struck hands there to transfer the 
ideal of liberty into the institutions of government. 
Little Rhode Island was an inventor's model. 
History has since then abundantly tried it out. 
Religion to-day is weakest where coercion in its 
behalf is most common. 

During the colonial period it fell to the Baptists 
and Quakers to bear the brunt of what was left 



8 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

of the old persecuting spirit. They invaded the 
monopoly of the other churches. And they were 
not genteel. They refused to pay taxes and keep 
quiet. They always carried a chip on their shoul- 
ders. But their persecution helped to make perse- 
cution odious. 

The American Revolution was a crucial time in 
the development of religious liberty in our country. 
It put an end to the possibility of an Anglican 
State Church in America. It was proposed by 
very eminent men that all churches alike should 
henceforth be supported by taxation. All citizens 
were to be compelled to pay toward the support 
of religion but might designate the church to which 
their taxes should go. In that case all denomina- 
tions would have had their hand in the public purse. 
That is the very evil which we fear to-day in con- 
nection with the State support of parochial schools. 
The Baptists seem to have been the only denomina- 
tion which set itself against this policy as a body. 
They were also very influential in the adoption of 
the first amendment to the Constitution prohibiting 
the establishment of religion or interference with 
religious liberty. It is rather appalling to think 
what a mixing of religion and politics would have 
meant in the democratic life of America during 
the nineteenth century. The Church has been one 
of the few sections of our social organizations that 
has been free from graft. This we owe in part at 
least to the Baptists. 

The Methodists and Baptists have long gained 



I 
I 



THE BAPTIST CONTRIBUTION 9 

a vast preponderance in point of numbers among 
al] Protestant bodies in America. They achieved 
this in spite of the fact that they could gain little 
increase by immigration. The Catholics, the 
Lutherans, the Presbyterians, the Episcopalians, 
had entire nations from which to draw their in- 
crease. The Methodists and Baptists had to se- 
cure their increase by some sort of efficiency. 
They established themselves chiefly among the 
farmers and the working class and trained these 
classes in the workings of democracy. Both of 
these great bodies have certainly helped to make 
freedom a second nature to countless men and 
women and have predisposed them to favor political 
and social liberty wherever these were called in 
question. In that way the little church democ- 
racies scattered broadcast over our country have 
helped to maintain civil liberty. In the present 
struggle for a wider social and economic de- 
mocracy they have not failed to raise their old war- 
cries and to manifest their ancient spirit. 

The extreme individualism which characterizes 
the Baptist churches is not a complete and final 
expression of religion in human society. It can 
be understood only as a reaction against the co- 
ercive religion of the past. Now that religious 
liberty is conceded by all, and most of the great 
churches, abandoning their ancient ecclesiastical 
pride, have adjusted themselves to the practice of 
equality, the Baptists may safely modify their 
militant individualism and enter into that commu- 



10 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

nity religion which seems to be the present destiny 
of American religious life. It is one of the minor 
tragedies of history that this individualism, which 
was essentially a fighting attitude, now handicaps 
the Baptists to some extent in adjusting themselves 
to the social needs of the present day. But they 
have not spoken their last word. 



II 



THE CONGREGATIONAL CONTRIBUTION 
TO RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

WiLLisTON Walker, D.D. 

Each of the bodies into which American Chris- 
tendom is divided has made its gift to the sum 
total of American Christianity. No one of them 
can say that its peculiar contribution is of exclu- 
sive value. It is the many strands that have gone 
into the weaving of the fabric that give to Ameri- 
can Christianity its most distinctive traits, its' 
toleration, its large degree of mutual sympathy, 
its appeal to American life from many angles, its 
flexibihty and adaptability to new conditions, 
its willingness to try experiments and attempt 
new adjustments in Christian activities. If, 
therefore, at this time the characteristic contribu- 
tions of a single group of American churches are 
emphasized, it is with claim to no preponderating 
importance, but only in the belief that what the 
Congregational Churches have brought has been 
of worth in making up the bundle of American 
Christianity. Those churches have had their 
marked individuality, and they have stood for def- 
inite conceptions which have deeply influenced 
American religious life. 

11 i 



12 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

Yet in any consideration of the contributions of 
the Congregational Churches of America to civil 
and religious liberty the student must be on his 
guard lest he claim as the special gift of those 
churches much that was, indeed, conspicuously 
theirs, but theirs only as part of the general her- 
itage of the great family of Christian churches to 
which they and others of similar spiritual ante- 
cedents belong. The Congregational churches 
brought to these shores the Calvinistic inheritance. 
Much of that which appears most markedly 
characteristic of them, and which they have aided 
most distinctly in impressing on American life, 
was not of original development with them, how- 
ever effective their transmission of it, but had come 
to them from the mighty movement that originated 
in Geneva. 

Perhaps the most profoundly influential ele- 
ment in this common Calvinistic inheritance was 
the conviction that the Christian is called to be 
a fellow-worker with God. His election, — and 
the word though strange to most modern ears was 
very familiar and significant to the founders of 
New England, was no election to the passive en- 
joyment of salvation. That election was indeed 
an unmerited grace ; but it was a call and an en- 
duement for strenuous activity. It summoned a 
man to make the will of God regnant first of all 
in his own life, and then in the life of the com- 
munity, so far as his influence extended. It taught 
no meek endurance of evils and ills that could be 



THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 13 

overcome whether in personal character or in 
corporate association. God had chosen his serv- 
ants in a high sense for partnership with him 
in the advancement of his Kingdom, and that 
labor involved a strenuous and self-denying activ- 

It is from this conception as from a main root 
that much that is characteristic of Congrega- 
tionalism has grown. The settlement of the 
colonies in the raw wilderness across the Atlantic, 
that the founders might here establish the re- 
ligious institutions which they believed to be pre- 
scribed by the Word of God, was but a manifesta- 
tion of this spirit. They felt that, in a true 
sense, God had called them to set up his Kingdom 
in the new world, and that they would be dis- 
obedient to the divine will should they fail to heed 
the summons. From this conception, too, has 
sprung the reformatory zeal always character- 
istic of the churches of Congregational ancestry, 
whether they bear the Congregational name or 
not. It is this conviction that the Christian is 
chosen to make the will of God regnant in the 
community in which he lives, that gave birth to 
the " New England conscience," — a reformatory 
zeal not always agreeable in its manifestations, 
it may be, and often ridiculed by those of alien 
spiritual ancestry, but, after all, about the best 
of New England possessions. Yet it is evident 
that these characteristics, marked as they are in 
Congregationalism, are not of Congregational 



U FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

origin. They are part of the common Calvinistic 
heritage. 

A similar denial of any exclusive monopoly 
must be entered regarding the conception of re- 
lationship to the business of every-day life, and to 
the use of the things of the world in which men 
live, which is one of the notable traits of those 
of Congregational \fcraining. Congregationalism 
of course shared the results of that freedom won 
for all Protestantism by Luther, which is per- 
haps his greatest single contribution to modern 
Christian development, when he taught that not 
in separation from ordinary life, but in the nat- 
ural social relationships of the family and the 
honest labor of the field or workshop, the true 
sphere of Christian living is to be found. But 
even Luther had looked askance at trade, and had 
held that a desire to rise above the station in 
which a man found himself was almost a denial 
of the rightfulness of the divine appointment. 
With Calvinism had come the thought that men 
are placed in the world to use it, not for luxury, 
but with such mastery of its resources as God 
may give them power to achieve. To rise by in- 
creasing control of its gifts is not only not blame- 
worthy, it is in harmony with the will of God. 
C<Dntentment with one's lot, when that lot may be 
bettered by the honorable use of such means as 
a man has in his power, is no duty of a Christian 
man. Honest trade is honorable. Want of in- 
dustry and thrift are worthy only of contempt. 



THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 15 

This spirit, now perhaps regarded as old fashioned 
in our pleasure loving age, was long a characteristic 
of the Congregational training. It involved a 
thrift that would not abuse God's gifts by waste, 
but looked with satisfaction on their increase, 
especially if employed in stewardship for the ad- 
vancement of God's Kingdom. But it, too, was 
a part of the common Calvinistic heritage. 

Much the same affirmation must be made re- 
garding another eminent characteristic of the 
Congregational churches, — their love of educa- 
tion. It is with satisfaction that any son of New 
England recalls the foundation of schools in 
Massachusetts and Connecticut within half a 
decade of the settlement, the requirement of 1639 
that each town provide instruction for its chil- 
dren, and the foundation of Harvard College in 
1636 and of Yale in 1701. This early love for 
education has characterized Congregationalism 
to the present day. It has made the Congrega- 
tional Churches school-fostering and college-plant- 
ing, and the institutions of their foundation 
stretch from the Atlantic to the Pacific. No nar- 
row denominational education has been their ideal, 
but a training, religious in its spirit, but broadly 
free in its appeal. Yet even this zeal for educa- 
tion, based as it was originally on the conviction 
that learning in the pulpit and the pew is the 
surest road to knowledge of divine things, is no 
exclusive Congregational trait, however pre- 
eminent Congregationalists in America have been 



16 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

in its manifestation. It is part of the common 
heritage of Calvinism. 

So, too, if the influence of Congregationalism 
in the development of responsible government is 
considered, it will be found that it stands on the 
basis of Calvinism. This great service to liberty 
was a by-product, it may be said, of original Cal- 
vinism. Calvin taught that the powers that be 
are ordained of God. Monarchy, aristocracy or 
democracy are all good, if well administered. 
Obedience, complete and entire, is due to the 
government under which men live, save when its 
commands conflict with those of God. Then all 
duty of submission to human authority ceases. 
Who shall decide when the statutes of prince or 
of parliament are counter to the Will of God.? 
Calvin never answered that question directly. 
But the only answer practically possible is that 
the decision rests with each thinking man, as he 
weighs the enactments of human authority for 
himself in the balance with the divine commands. 
Calvin taught, also, that ministers are in their 
sacred office with the consent of the congregations 
that they serve. He never drew the full conse- 
quences from that far-reaching principle. Cal- 
vinism did. If the pastor serves his flock with its 
consenting approval, then if he is unworthy of his 
trust those to whom he has been unfaithful may 
remove him from his office. And, if those in the 
church, why not those, also, in civil authority.? 
Are they not responsible to the people whom they 



THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 17 

govern, and to be rejected when they govern 
amiss? Congregationahsm entered on this in- 
heritance to the full. It has been a conspic- 
uous factor in making it a common American pos- 
session. It was Congregational New England 
that threw off the yoke of an Andros, and later 
proclaimed that " taxation without representa- 
tion is tyranny." Yet here, too, Congregational- 
ism was but enlarging the bounds of the common 
Calvinistic heritage. 

While the Congregational churches have, there- 
fore, in many important respects simply developed 
the general positions of Calvinism, they have, 
nevertheless, made their distinct contribution to 
American civil and religious liberty. One such 
gift is to be seen in their emphasis upon democ- 
racy. As compared with modern democratic de- 
velopments, the democracy of the founders was, 
indeed, limited. Samuel Stone, the teacher of 
the church in Hartford, Conn., was perhaps ex- 
treme when he expressed his ideal of the rela- 
tions of church officers to the congregation over 
which they were placed as those of " a speaking 
aristocracy in the face of a silent democracy." 
But, whatever their limitations, the Congrega- 
tional churches from the beginning claimed for 
every member a voice in their affairs. By the votes 
of the entire membership the minister was chosen 
to his office ; by the same general suffrage members 
were admitted or disciplined. This was a share 
in churchly affairs which none of the great com- 



18 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

munions of the old world, not even those of the 
Calvinistic family, had to offer; though a similar 
participation could be found among the Baptists. 
It is with the Congregational churches, however, 
that such democracy first comes into practice in 
bodies having state recognition, and established 
in any considerable territory. 

The basal constituent element in a Congrega- 
tional church was, moreover, the mutual covenant 
by which believers are joined to God and one an- 
other. Entrance on such a covenant relation- 
ship, in Congregational theory, transforms a com- 
pany of individual Christians into a church. It 
is a voluntary agreement, consciously assumed, 
and involving definite and permanent relationships. 
It is natural that as men think in ecclesiastical 
polity so they should conceive civil institutions, 
and this was eminently true among the founders of 
New England. When the company in the cabin 
of the " Mayflower " found themselves in the har- 
bor at the extremity of Cape Cod, beyond the 
jurisdiction under which they had expected to 
settle in this new world, and therefore without 
legal standing, they met the situation by creating 
a state, as they would a church, by union in a 
mutual covenant, agreeing by compact to be 
ruled by " such iust and equall Lawes, Ordinances, 
acts, constitutions, offices from time to time as 
shall be thought most meet and convenient for the 
generall good of the Colony." With such princi- 
ples abroad, it is no wonder that Thomas Hooker 



THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 19 

could declare the doctrine in his famous sermon 
at Hartford, of May 31, 1638, " that the choice 
of public magistrates belongs unto the people by 
God's own allowance " ; and that " they who have 
power to appoint officers and magistrates, it is in 
their power, also, to set the bounds of the power 
and place unto which they call them." And the 
reason of these powers, Hooker affirms is " because 
the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the 
free consent of the people." From this message 
of democracy in church and state the Congrega- 
tional churches have never swerved. It is proba- 
bly their greatest contribution to American re- 
ligious and political life that can be called some- 
thing other than their Calvinistic inheritance. 
The Congregational ideal, both in church and 
state, is that of full-rounded, independent, respon- 
sible manhood and womanhood. 

A further characteristic of the Congregational 
view of political life is the New England town 
system. It would be too much to claim this form 
of political organization as the direct product of 
New England ecclesiasticism. Its origin has 
been, and is still, a bone of historical contention. 
But there can be no question that it grew up in 
a region dominated by Congregational ideals, and 
was the product of similar modes of thought. The 
New England town is one of the most remarkable 
of American political entities. A local democracy, 
controlling its own affairs by the direct vote of 
all its citizens, completely self-governing within 



20 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

its own territory, in all matters of merely local 
concern, it corresponds in the political sphere to 
the self-governing Congregational church in the 
realm of religion. It is ill adapted, as experience 
has proved, for complex urban conditions, with 
their great diversities of race, of industries and of 
wealth. It may be questioned whether the Con- 
gregational church is the best form of organiza- 
tion in a similar environment. But, given a fairly 
homogeneous population, especially one prevail- 
ingly agricultural in its occupation, with no great 
diversities of wealth or of education, there can be 
no doubt that the New England town has proved 
a remarkably effective political creation. It has 
been a rare training-school in democracy. It has 
produced an independent, intelligent, thoughtful 
citizenship. It has justified its right to be by 
its fruits. 

The influence of the New England town system 
has been much wider in America than the region 
of its actual adoption. Without pressing too far 
the claim that this or that state contributed the 
pattern of our national union, it is evident that 
the relation of the states' one to another in the 
federal constitution is very similar to that of town 
to town in the old New England colonies. This 
resemblance is more than a mere coincidence. If 
it is being profoundly modified by the development 
of larger problems now facing the whole country, 
the experience is being but repeated on a national 
scale through which the town system has been pass- 



THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 21 

ing, but to recognize the facts of the present is 
not to deny the great educative value of the sys- 
tem in the past or its remarkable adaptation to 
much of American political history. It has given 
its most distinctive political feature to the de- 
velopment of the United States. 

Were one to claim for Congregationalism a 
leadership in certain important fields, the claim 
would have a measure of historic justice, yet the 
spirit of such movements was so in the atmosphere 
and was so early caught by other American bodies 
of Christians, as to give no exclusive quality to 
their furtherance. Such a field is that of Mis- 
sions. Congregational missions began in 1646 
with the labors of John Eliot for the Christianiza- 
tion and civilization of the Massachusetts In- 
dians. His efforts were the immediate cause of 
the formation of the first English missionary so- 
ciety, the " President and Society for the Propa- 
gation of the Gospel in New England," chartered 
by the Long Parliament in 1649. So, too, the 
first great American Foreign Missionary Society, 
the " American Board of Commissioners for For- 
eign Missions," of 1810, was of Congregational 
origin. But one does not forget the wide ex- 
tended missions of the Roman Church in America, 
beginning far earlier than those of Congrega- 
tionalism; and if, among Protestants, Congrega- 
tionalism was a leader, others speedily bore the 
torch. 

Much the same thing may be said regarding the 



m FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

anti-slavery movement. It was a Congrega- 
tional judge, Samuel Sewall of Massachusetts, who 
protested against the bondage of his fellow-men 
in his " On the Selling of Joseph " of 1700, thus 
becoming the author of the first American anti- 
slavery appeal. They were two Congregational 
ministers of Rhode Island, Samuel Hopkins and 
Ezra Stiles, who organized a society, in 1773, the 
the purpose of which was to train and send col- 
ored missionaries to Africa. It was the same 
Samuel Hopkins, sternest of New England Cal- 
vinists, who, in 1776, put forth a " Dialogue con- 
cerning the Slavery of the Africans; shewing it 
to be the Duty and Interest of the American 
States to emancipate all their African Slaves." 
By no accident was William EUery Channing one 
of Hopkins' hearers and friends. But others, 
also, were enlisted for the cause of the slave, and 
American Congregationalism would claim no more 
than that it had an early and an honorable part in 
the contest which prepared the way for emanci- 
pation, and that since freedom has been achieved 
it has borne its full share in efforts for the Chris- 
tianization and elevation of the enfranchised race. 
A larger claim for Congregationalism may be 
made when it is asserted that it has fostered the 
spirit of free inquiry in matters of religion. The 
founders of New England crossed the Atlantic on 
no doctrinal issue. They were in full agreement, 
theologically, with the great Calvinist party of 
England and Scotland. To it and to them re- 



THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 23 

ligion meant the same thing. When triumphant 
Calvinism in the home land formulated its famous 
Confession of Faith at Westminster, they were 
rejoiced to approve it as " very holy, orthodox, 
and judicious." They felt no doctrinal gulf be- 
tween those whom they had left in England and 
themselves. It was only on questions of church- 
organization and government, — questions of the 
utmost importance, indeed, in their estimate, — 
that they were at disagreement with those from 
whom they had come out. Yet even from the first 
there were signs of a spirit different from that 
which English and Scottish Calvinism manifested. 
John Robinson had charged the embarking Pil- 
grims, in 1620, " to follow him no farther than 
he followed Christ; and if God should reveal any- 
thing by other instruments of His, to be as ready 
to receive it as ever ... to receive any truth 
by his ministry ; for he was very confident the 
Lord had more truth and light yet to break forth 
out of His holy word." It may be, as some have 
claimed, that in thus speaking Robinson had 
polity alone in mind; but even so the utterance 
was of almost prophetic significance. 

To Congregational thinking each local church 
has the right to formulate its confession of faith 
in words of its own choosing. It has never bound 
its disciples to ancient formulas or required as- 
sent to " historic creeds." Possibly Congrega- 
tionalism has been one sided in this emphasis. 
The churches of this order have not always shown 



U FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

that sense of the " historic continuity " of Chris- 
tianity that is due. It is well, we may believe, 
that other strands have gone into the loom of our 
American Christianity, and that it includes, also, 
those to' whom the ancient and historic aspects of 
our faith are preeminently dear. But here, too, 
Congregationalism surely has its place and its 
mission. Congregationalism has always been, in 
the best sense of the word, rationalistic. It has 
reverenced the Scriptures, but it has been con- 
vinced that no interpretation of their message, or 
system of Christian faith, which does not justify 
itself at the bar of severe intellectual examination 
can be true. Hence New England gave to Amer- 
ica in the school of Edwards of the eighteenth 
and early nineteenth centuries, the only great 
original reinterpretation of Calvinism that this 
land has produced. They were giants who battled 
in those days ; but the weapons of their warfare 
were those of the intellect, and if their sons have 
ceased to follow them, it is because their premises 
and their arguments no longer carry conviction 
to the mind as once they did. 

It is the same freedom of investigation and ap- 
peal to intellectual conviction that appears on 
both sides in the one great division which the 
Congregational churches have experienced, — the 
Unitarian separation of the early nineteenth 
century. Each of these contesting parties in 
this struggle believed that its conclusions were 
those which alone were rationally defensible; and 



THE CONGREGATIONALISTS 25 

each used very similar processes of argument. If 
we of a century later believe both parties in this 
contest were in many respects in error in method 
and conclusions, it is not because we doubt their 
intellectual sincerity or discredit the courage with 
which they dared to attack the fundamental prob- 
lems of our faith. 

That spirit of open mindedness still continues 
to characterize the Congregational churches. 
They have welcomed as freely as have any eccle- 
siastical communions in America the results of 
Biblical and historical criticism which have been 
in many ways so revolutionary of theological 
thinking within the last generation. They have 
no fear that truth can be a peril; but they are 
also conservative enough to wish to be sure that it 
is truth that asks for admission. For them the 
Apostolic injunction " Prove all things; hold fast 
that which is good " might well be taken as a 
watchword. This open-mindedness of spirit is 
one of the chiefest of the contributions of Con- 
gregationalism to American religious' life. 

The Congregational churches have never as- 
serted, even in their earliest and most polemic days, 
that they are the only churches of Christ. They 
are far from so believing at the present. They 
gladly recognize the value of other, and widely 
divergent, types of the Christian faith. It is 
well that our American religious life traces its 
streams from many sources. But that Congre- 
gationalism has contributed elements of impor- 



26 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

tance and of abiding worth they are confident, 
and they believe that their confidence is justified 
by the history and the present status of American 
Christianity. 



Ill 



THE FRIENDS' CONTRIBUTION TO RELI- 
GIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

O. Edward Janney, M.D. 

Ill studying the influence of the people called 
Quakers on civil and religious liberty in America, 
their sturdy opposition to civil and religious op- 
pression in the mother country must be taken into 
consideration. This quality they carried over to 
the New World. It is recorded that during twen- 
ty-five years of the reign of Charles the Second, 
13,562 Quakers were imprisoned, 198 were trans- 
ported over seas as slaves, and 338 died in prison 
or of wounds received while being dragged from 
religious assemblies. Such experiences seemed 
only to increase the ardor of men and women who 
believed themselves to be divinely led, and to whom 
persecution only set the seal of divine approbation 
on their faithfulness. 

Nor was it an easy task for the English author- 
ities to suppress Quakerism in their realm. To 
break up an ordinary religious gathering it was 
necessary only to remove the preacher or the Bi- 
ble ; but in a Friends' meeting, if the minister were 

removed, others at once took his place, and for 

27 



28 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

this reason, in order to suppress the meeting every- 
one present had to be thrown into prison. Even 
then they preached through the windows, and con- 
verted people who were passing along the street. 

Under the circumstances it was inevitable that 
the Quakers should turn their eyes toward the New 
Continent, as a place where, with those of other 
sects who were suffering persecution in the Old 
World, they could worship God in peace and se- 
curity. News soon reached them, however, that 
the same spirit of persecution to which they had 
been subjected in England was rife in the new 
land; and then there arose a strong purpose in 
many of the Quakers to visit the Colonies in a 
spirit of protest. 

They came. They were not wanted, but they 
came. The welcome that they received may be 
judged by the wording of one of the first laws of 
Massachusetts directed against them : " There is 
a cursed sect of heretics lately risen up in the 
world which are commonly called Quakers, who 
take upon themselves to be immediately sent of 
God, and infallibly assisted by the Spirit to speak 
and write blasphemous opinions, displeasing to God 
and the order of God in church and common- 
wealth." 

In the southern colonies, the Quakers, for the 
most part, suffered little persecution for their 
religious opinions, and through their firm and con- 
sistent demands for religious liberty for all men, 
made such an impression upon the authorities, 



THE FRIENDS' CONTRIBUTION ^9 

that the privilege or right of freedom of worship 
granted to them in the first place, in the course 
of time, and partly through the efforts of the 
Quakers, was extended to all men. 

In Pennsylvania, religious liberty was the 
foundation stone of Penn's government. The 
Friends who laid the foundations for New Jersey 
determined to eliminate from that section all danger 
of religious persecution. " Many of the little com- 
pany who established that colony had lain in 
loathsome English jails. They had proved their 
faithfulness ; had borne their persecutions pa- 
tiently. Justified by years of hardship, now they 
longed for the wider outlook which provided a 
secure home for their children in the future. ' I 
wish,' wrote one of them, ' that they that come 
after may remember these things.' ' The settle- 
ment of this country,' says another witness, ' was 
directed by an impulse on the spirit of God's peo- 
ple, not for their own ease and tranquillity, but 
rather for the posterity which should come after 
them.'" (R. M. Jones.) 

In Maryland the spirit of the brave old martyr 
Wenlock Christison, who had been under the sen- 
tence of death in Boston, and only escaped through 
the arrival of the missive of King Charles ordering 
the release of the Quakers, and who later settled 
on the Eastern shore of Maryland, gathered about 
him a rapidly-growing band, every one of whom 
was in sympathy with the liberal policy of Lord 
Baltimore. 



so FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

It may surprise some to know that for a hundred 
years, Quakers had control of the affairs of Rhode 
Island, and elected Quaker Grfovemors from 1666 
to 1714, and from 1721 to 1774, during which 
time religious liberty was assured. 

In all of these colonies, and to a considerable 
extent in the other southern colonies, religious lib- 
erty was implanted in the fundamental law, partly 
through the influence of Friends, in the spirit of 
these words of William Penn : " Thus we lay a 
foundation for after ages to understand their lib- 
erty as men and Christians, that they may not be 
brought into bondage but by their own consent. 
No person to be called in question or molested for 
his conscience, or for worship according to his 
conscience." 

The story of the treatment of the Quakers by 
the Massachusetts Colony is one of the most strik- 
ing and instructive in American history. The 
coming to that locality of those quiet-mannered 
men and women aroused an astonishing and active 
opposition that, perhaps, can be explained only 
by the world-old conflict between tyranny and 
democracy. For the Quakers were democrats. 
They advocated the rights of the people against 
arbitrary civil and religious tyranny; and thus 
there arose at once a spirit of opposition on the 
part of the Massachusetts authorities that was 
destined to give rise to persecution even to death. 
Three men and one woman suff*ered death by hang- 
ing on Boston Common, while many others were 



THE FRIENDS' CONTRIBUTION 31 

publicly whipped, stripped, even the women, from 
the waist up, and others were mutilated and im- 
prisoned. 

But this persecution was finally to break down, 
partly through the effect of the gentle and Chris- 
tian behavior of the victims, and partly through 
the natural repugnance aroused by such cruel treat- 
ment. The laws against Quakers were gradually 
made milder, and were finally abolished in 1724. 
The gentle spirit of the martyr, Mary Dyer, pre- 
vailed in the end. After being reprieved and ban- 
ished she returned to Boston on the 21st of May, 
1660, and was brought before the Governor. " Are 
you the same Mary Dyer that was here before? " 
asked Endicott. " I am the same." " You will 
own yourself to be a Quaker, will you not.? " " I 
own myself to be reproachfully so called." Then 
followed the sentence of death by hanging. Mary 
Dyer then said, " This is no more than what thou 
saidst before." " But now," said the Governor, 
" it is to be executed." " I came," she said sol- 
emnly, " in obedience to the will of God, at your 
last General Court, desiring you to repeal your un- 
righteous laws of banishment on pain of death; 
and that same is my word now, and earnest re- 
quest, although I told you that if you refused to 
repeal them, the Lord would send others of His 
servants to witness against them." At the foot of 
the gallows she testified, " In obedience to the will 
of the Lord God I came and in His will I abide 
faithful unto death," and then with words about 



32 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

her eternal happiness she went to meet Him " in 
whose image she shined " here below. 

Is it not fair to claim, in view of these historical 
facts, that the Quakers exerted a mighty influence 
over the colonies from Massachusetts to the Caro- 
linas in favor of the religious liberty which now 
blesses our land, and which has been incorporated 
into the fundamental law of every State, and also 
into the Constitution of the Federal Union? 

It is an interesting fact that Quaker influence 
was paramount in civil affairs for some hundred 
years in Rhode Island, The Jerseys and Pennsyl- 
vania ; and was distinctly felt in the southern prov- 
inces. 

In Maryland, Lord Baltimore complained in 
1681 to the Assembly, that, " moved by the clam- 
ours of the Quakers," he was resolved henceforth 
to publish to the people the proceedings of all of 
the Assemblies — surely one of their rights. That 
there were Quaker members of the Assemblies is 
shown by a rebuke administered by Lord Baltimore 
in a speech before the Assembly in which he cen- 
sures certain members for " rudely presuming to 
come before his lordship with their hats on." 
However, in Maryland, as in Pennsylvania and 
elsewhere, Friends came to think it was safer to 
keep out of politics, and they thenceforth con- 
tented themselves with sending petitions to the 
Legislature instead of members — a loss to the 
Colonies as well as to the Society of Friends itself. 
(R. M. Jones.) 



THE FRIENDS' CONTRIBUTION S5 

But the " Holy Experiment in Government " 
of William Penn constitutes the most instructive 
and important exercise of Quaker influence in the 
direction of the establishment of civil liberty in 
America. " The idea of a Commonwealth devoted 
to liberty and peace drew out the best powers of 
Penn's comprehensive and enthusiastic intellect. 
There was no room in Europe, but in the great 
unoccupied expanse of the New World he would 
carry out his ideals with a selected community in 
sympathy with them, of a serious and honest sort, 
to whom he would transfer the governmental power 
and realty rights he had purchased of the Crown, 
reserving only such moderate share of each as 
security for the future and family interests would 
justify. It was a glorious conception and a no 
less glorious opportunity, and we find him con- 
tinually tempering his natural ardor by considera- 
tions of duty to God and man, as the seriousness 
of the task and the risks of failure pressed them- 
selves upon him. 

Penn's argument was that the moral law was 
transcendent to all decrees of King and legisla- 
tures, and to all supposed exigencies of circum- 
stances. " No conditions permitted its annulment. 
No necessities were so great as to justify its abro- 
gation. It was the All-wise Creator's law upon 
which all right human conduct must be based. It 
could not always be accurately determined, but 
when known, it was imperative ; and so to fight evil 
with evil was, in the long run, only tO' postpone the 



34 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

victory of truth and to pile up trouble for the 
future. Fight, fight continuously and without 
flinching, but do not play into the hands of iniquity 
by substituting one form for another — this was 
the influence of William Penn ; " and ought to have 
been the outcome of his experiment in Pennsyl- 
vania. 

" The influence of Friendly ideas upon American 
institutions has been great. It is quite possible 
that these institutions have drawn more from the 
principles brought over in the Welcome than from 
the intellectual freightage of any other ship; that 
of all the colonial founders William Penn saw more 
truly than any other the line on which the future 
would develop ; that himself and his collaborators 
builded more wisely than any others when they 
reared a State devoted to' democracy, liberty and 
peace." (R. M. Jones.) 

The charter of Pennsylvania of 1701 was based 
on the principles of true democracy. The first 
article grants liberty of conscience to all who 
" Confess and acknowledge Almighty God ; and 
grants to all who believe in Jesus Christ the right 
to hold executive and legislative offices." 

The second provides for an Assembly to be 
chosen yearly by the free men ; to consist of four 
or more persons from each county. This Assem- 
bly to have full power to choose its officers, to judge 
of the qualifications of its own members, to ad- 
journ itself, to make laws, to impeach criminals 
and redress grievances, " with all other powers and 



THE FRIENDS' CONTRIBUTION 35 

privileges of an Assembly according to the rights 
of freebom subjects of England." Herein, then, 
lies the germ of the Constitutions of most of our 
States, and some of the important provisions of 
the Federal Constitution. 

The influence of Friends on the laws governing 
oaths, military services, the payment of church 
tithes, temperance, and social vice has been ex- 
tensive, although, in the nature of the case, the 
extent cannot be ascertained. 

There can be no doubt, however, that the aboli- 
tion of human slavery in America was greatly 
hastened through the eff'orts and self-sacrifice of 
m,any Friends. They were put into a cruel posi- 
tion by the coming on of the Civil War, brought 
on in part by their fervent advocacy of human lib- 
erty, and whose horrors and evils they deeply de- 
plored. 

Friends, with rare exceptions, have withdrawn 
from active participation in politics, they have not 
increased in numbers in this country ; their advo- 
cacy of Quakerism has been very gentle; but may 
it not be that through them has been placed in the 
mass of our people a divine leaven that is helping 
to produce those great movements that are sweep- 
ing humanity along in the direction of civil and 
religious liberty, simplicity and purity of life? 



IV 



THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION TO RELI- 
GIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY (WITH 
SPECIAL REFERENCE TO 
REFORM JUDAISM) 
H. G. Enelow, D.D. 

Professor RufRni, in his work on Religious Lib- 
erty, reminds us that rehgious liberaHsm and re- 
hgious liberty have not always gone together. 
" There have been most fervid believers who have 
been in every way favorable to religious liberty, 
as well as utterly prejudiced free-thinkers who have 
been absolutely against it." For illustrations we 
are not limited to records of the past. Unfortu- 
nately, we can find them in our own everyday expe- 
rience. Bad as is fanaticism anywhere, it is worst 
when found in conjunction with liberalism. A lib- 
eral employing the weapons of the fanatic is a 
tragic sight. 

None the less, the promotion of religious and civil 
liberty has been due largely to liberalism; and for 
obvious reasons. Though it is possible for one to 
be liberal and yet adhere to the general religious 
organization, liberalism as a rule has involved dis- 
sent, and dissenters have always had to battle for 

recognition and freedom. In fighting for their own 

36 



THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION 37 

religious liberty, it was almost inevitable that they 
should fight for the principle of religious liberty 
in general, and for the extension of its rule. The 
Socinians, the Baptists, and other dissenting 
sects could not demand toleration for themselves 
without benefiting fellow-dissenters. Thus, those 
who have fought the most for their own religious 
and civil freedom, have wrought the most for its 
general establishment. 

Reform Judaism owes a great deal both to the 
ideas of liberalism and the principle of religious 
liberty. If it is an expression, on the one hand, of 
religious liberalism, it is, on the other, the child of 
religious liberty. Some trace the ascendency of 
political and civil liberty in Europe to the Ameri- 
can Revolution. If this geneology is correct. Re- 
form Judaism even in its origin was indebted to 
America. Liberals have never been wanting in Is- 
rael. There were always Jewish teachers to whom 
the essentials of their religion meant more than the 
accidentals, the permanent principles more than the 
transient forms, the spirit more than the letter. 
The Prophets are the true prototypes of Jewish 
liberalism. But organized Reform Judaism, the 
Reform synagogue, came into existence as a result 
of the political and civil emancipation of the Jew ; 
and this emancipation was an important part of 
the general progress of religious liberty. When 
Western Europe extended to the Jew the rights of 
citizenship, coupled with the right to follow his own 
conscience and judgment in his religious life, it 



38 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

marked a triumph for religious liberty, as well as 
the inauguration of a new era for Judaism. Re- 
form Judaism was a self -adaptation of Judaism to 
the new conditions. It was the child of political 
liberalism in Europe, without which it could not 
have come into existence, and it has reached its 
highest degree of development in America, because 
here it has enjoyed the largest measure of freedom. 
And freedom has been essential to its growth. 

But the Jewish contribution to religious and civil 
liberty in the United States has been independent 
of any consideration of orthodoxy or reform. In 
this respect there has been no division in Israel. 
As long as the Jew has lived in this country — and 
his history goes back to the earliest period — he is 
known to have fought on the side of civil and reli- 
gious liberty. And it was natural for him to do 
so. First, the whole history of the Jew has made 
him a spontaneous champion of freedom. " For 
ye were slaves in the land of Egypt ! " More 
than any other being the Jew has suffered from 
fanaticism, and it would have been exceedingly 
strange if the recollection of his own fate had 
failed to make him a foe of every form of religious 
intolerance. In addition, he did not find even 
on this Continent a general recognition of the 
principle of religious liberty, and in several in- 
stances he had to fight hard before it was extended 
to him. Thus, long before the arrival of Re- 
form Judaism to these shores, we find Jews exert- 
ing themselves in behalf of religious and civil 



THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION 39 

liberty. But whatever they gained for themselves 
in that direction, was not without effect upon the 
triumph of the principle of liberty in general. 

Let me remind you of some noteworthy incidents 
in the course of this struggle. Consider, first, the 
well-known case of Asser Levy. The first con- 
siderable settlement of Jews within the bounds of 
what now forms the United States occurred in 
New Amsterdam in the year 1654. In the very 
following year. Governor Stuyvesant was ordered 
to attack the Swedes on the Delaware. A number 
of Jews seem tO' have offered to serve, but were 
summarily rejected. The Governor and his Coun- 
cil passed an ordinance prohibiting Jews from 
serving as soldiers, but taxing them instead with 
a monthly contribution for exemption. The 
Jews, under the leadership of Asser Levy, 
promptly refused to pay and asked for the privi- 
lege to stand guard like other burghers, or to be 
relieved from the tax. The petition was rejected 
with the comment that if the petitioners were not 
satisfied with the law, they might gO' elsewhere. 
Asser Levy took an appeal to Holland, which was 
acted upon favorably, and he was subsequently 
permitted to do guard duty like other citizens. 
When two years later the burgher right was made 
a prerequisite for certain trading privileges, Asser 
Levy requested to be admitted as a burgher. The 
officials of the court were surprised that a Jew 
should make such an application, but Levy per- 
sisted, asserting that " he kept watch and ward " 



40 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

like other burghers and was entitled to the same 
privileges, which were finally granted by the Gov- 
ernor. This was in the year 1657, thirteen years 
after Roger Williams had published his great book 
against religious persecutions and just ten years 
after the appearance of Milton's book on religious 
liberty. Levy's victory was of particular impor- 
tance to the Jews of the Colony, but it had its 
larger significance to the rest of the people as a 
step in the progress of religious liberty. Vigorous 
as Levy was in the championship of his rights as 
a Jew, he maintained cordial relations with non- 
Jewish fellow-citizens, and in the year 1671 we see 
him advance the money for the construction of the 
first Lutheran Church in New York, just as in 
the year 1711 we hear of the Jews of the city, in- 
cluding the rabbi, making a substantial contribu- 
tion toward building the steeple of Trinity Church. 
Thus, early in their career, the Jews of this Com- 
monwealth taught the lesson that true liberalism 
means a combination of devotion to one's own 
faith with respect for the faith of one's fellows. 
Asser Levy's conduct has been followed by 
American Jews in general. They have contended 
for their rights and responsibilities as citizens, for 
the principle that their faith should form no hin- 
drance to the enjoyment of their political and civil 
rights and the exercise of their duties, in a word for 
the principle of separation of church and state. 
Forming a minority, they particularly appre- 
ciate the importance of this principle. But what- 



THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION 41 

ever victory the struggle has brought them, has 
been not only for themselves, but for all Ameri- 
can citizens. 

Consider, for example, the case of Maryland. 
It was the activity of Jewish citizens that led to 
the adoption of the principle of universal religious 
liberty in that state. For, even after the consti- 
tution of 1776 had laid down the religious rights 
of all, public office in Maryland could be held only 
by such as subscribed to the Christian religion. 
From 1797 on, Jewish citizens made a strong fight, 
lasting for a generation, for the removal of that 
provision. In 1825 an Act of Assembly was 
finally passed abolishing it, and the two Jews most 
active in the struggle were, the year following, 
elected members of the city council of Baltimore. 
As a result of that struggle the Constitution of 
Maryland was at first modified specifically in 
favor of Jews — the only instance of the kind in 
American history — but further modifications were 
made later on for the benefit of all non-Christians. 
This is the only instance in American history, as 
has been said, " where the establishment of a fun- 
damental constitutional principle can be credited 
to the specific labors of individual Jews." 

However, there is little room for doubt that the 
Jewish element made itself felt also in the struggle 
which resulted in the passage of the Act for Reli- 
gious Freedom in Virginia. We know what pride 
Jefferson took in this Act, prepared by him seven 
years before its adoption; what a source of true 



42 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

pride it is to every Virginian. The Act establish- 
ing religious freedom was not passed, however, 
without a sharp contest. Another measure, which 
would have curtailed the rights of every non-Chris- 
tian citizen, first had to be defeated. It was pro- 
posed to have a universal tax " for the support of 
teachers of the Gospel." Introduced in 1784, this 
measure gained considerable popularity, and 
would have passed but for the strong opposition 
organized and led by Madison. Assiduous labor 
and eloquent appeal on the part of the latter 
stopped the enactment of a law which would have 
compelled every Jew and other non-Christian to 
contribute to the support of other people's 
churches, would have restricted the freedom of 
opinion and conscience, and deflowered Virginia of 
the chief beauty of American civilization. 

Recent studies lead to the conclusion that the 
influence of the Jewish population of Virginia with 
Madison and his fellow-workers was responsible 
to some extent for the vigor with which the ob- 
noxious measure was fought. The Jews were a 
concrete example of the injustice it would entail. 
" The leaders of the Virginia movement," says an 
historian, " had been brought repeatedly into per- 
sonal contact with zealous and self-sacrificing 
Jewish co-workers in the struggle for American 
independence. They knew and appreciated them 
and their eff^orts." Haym Salomon, for example, 
to quote from the manuscript of Jared Sparks, 
" extended during the Revolutionary struggle to 



THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION 43 

the immortal delegation from Virginia, namely, 
Arthur Lee, Theodore Bland, Joseph Jones, John 
F. Mercer, and Eden Randolph, liberal suppKes 
of timely and pecuniary aid, and we find it declared 
by one of the most accomplished, most learned, 
and patriotic members of the succeeding sessions 
of the Revolutionary legislature, James Madison, 
that when the pecuniary resources of the members 
of Congress, both public and private, were cut off, 
recourse was had to Mr. Salomon for means to an- 
swer their current expenses, and he was always 
found extending his friendly hand." Madison, 
likewise, was personally the recipient of frequent 
kindnesses from Salomon, which must have disposed 
him toward friendship for the Jews. Besides, 
there is evidence that Virginia at the time contained 
a considerable Jewish element, who no doubt ex- 
erted their influence against the Assessment Act 
and in favor of the Act for Religious Freedom. 

From those early days to this, the Jew has kept 
up the fight for a complete separation of church 
and state, not only where his own interests were 
involved, but also those of other American citi- 
zens. And it may be safely stated that he has 
never won a victory for himself without benefiting 
the cause of religious liberty. Perhaps there 
are some people, for example, who consider the 
recent abrogation of the Russian treaty on ac- 
count of Russia's discrimination against American 
Jews as a purely Jewish victory; but, as a mat- 
ter of fact, it is a general American triumph, 



44 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

one of the most important incidents in the annals 
of rehgious liberty, a vindication of the principle 
of civil and religious freedom to which future gen- 
erations will point with pride and as an inspiration. 
If the Jew was the direct cause of the incident, 
he has by his labor and struggle accomplished 
something for the common cause. Similarly, the 
Jew has stood for everything conducive to civil 
and religious liberty, and above all the maintenance 
of the fundamental democratic principle of com- 
plete separation of church and state, because none 
is better able to appreciate the necessity and the 
benefits of such freedom than he. The untold 
tragedy of the Jew has been due to the cruelty of 
man to man in the domain of religion, which was 
made possible only by the combination of religious 
fanaticism with political power. A people that 
bears in its heart the memory of Haman and An- 
tiochus, of Torquemada and Pobiedonostzeff, may 
be counted on as an opponent of political fanat- 
icism and champion of religious liberty as long 
as it remains loyal to its ideals. 

That Reform Judaism should be devoted to this 
particular cause follows from the very nature of 
it history and character. I have already spoken 
of the historical connection between Reform Ju- 
daism and liberalism. As for its character, de- 
fining it in terms of loyalty, it may be said to' be 
based on three phases of loyalty: First, loyalty 
to the essentials of the old faith, as proclaimed 
by the Prophets and illumined by our teachers. 



THE JEWISH CONTRIBUTION 45 

Secondly, loyalty to the divine spirit within man, 
by means of which our religious understanding 
is continuously developed and broadened. And, 
thirdly, loyalty to the society of which we form a 
part. In conformity with these principles, every 
liberal Jew will ever be found in the ranks of those 
whose great aim is to maintain in this country and 
to extend to other countries those conditions of 
civil and religious liberty which have proven such 
a blessing in the past. 



THE METHODIST CONTRIBUTION TO 
RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

Lewis Marshall Lounsbury 

As one studies this whole field one becomes con- 
vinced that the concept of liberty is a most desir- 
able and valuable one, but that the functioning 
of it in practical affairs is exceedingly difficult. 
Methodism is a part of the great Protestant move- 
ment, which advanced wave after wave through the 
generations, each crest of the wave taking some 
new era of life and claiming it for liberty and for 
progress. The retreat of the wave is always due 
to the conservative reaction, due to the fear on 
the part of the discoverers of freedom that those 
who follow them will not follow exactly in their 
wake. Liberty is a mysterious and perilous thing, 
the reformer thinks, and as soon as he himself has 
come to liberty he desires that all who follow after 
him shall walk in his footsteps. In order to give 
a tolerably interesting or profitable address upon 
the contribution of Methodism to civil and reli- 
gious liberty, I think it will first be necessary to 
be a little biographical. 

In the year 1703, in the rectory at Ep worth, 
46 



THE METHODIST CONTRIBUTION 47 

was born a boy by the name of John Wesley. He 
grew up in the home of a priest of the Anglican 
church; he went to Oxford and there became a 
profoundly religious student, gathering about him- 
self in his post-graduate days a club of men called 
the Holy Club, and these men, all of them, were 
under the influence of the Church of England, 
with its liturgy and formalism. There was a cer- 
tain tyranny to it that they were restless under, 
and they were seeking by prayer and by study 
of the Scriptures somehow to get out into a larger 
place. John Wesley came to Georgia in 1736 
as a missionary to the Indians, and those of you 
who have read his experiences there remember 
that it was a disappointing epoch in his life. He 
was an ascetic, a ritualist, a formalist, and, en- 
deavoring to teach religion to the people in 
Georgia, he exhibited the darker aspects of ritual- 
ism and formalism, but all the while in the man's 
soul was a desire to get free; and he returns from 
Georgia, as he comes in sight of Land's End, with 
this confession upon his heart : " I went out to 
Georgia to convert the Indians, but who shall con- 
vert me ? " At thirty-five years of age there was 
a consciousness in his soul that he was more or 
less of a failure, that he had not found the foun- 
tains of life, he had not entered into the springs 
of moral and spiritual freedom, and returning to 
London under great distress of mind, desiring al- 
most to leave the priesthood and quit preaching, 
he comes in contact with a man named Peter 



48 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

Bohler, and Bohler begins to point out to this man 
the way of peace by faith. He lingers for a long 
while before he comes to the point of self-surrender, 
but one evening in Aldersgate street, London, while 
a layman was reading Luther's preface to the 
Epistle to the Romans, John Wesley feels his heart 
strangely warmed. It is an experience as old as 
that of Abraham; he wrestles that he may have 
peace, that he may come into living contact with 
the eternal reality ; and in that experience of John 
Wesley, as he comes personally to drink of the 
fountain of life, is bom much that is true and beau- 
tiful and progressive in the denomination which 
I have the honor to represent this morning. 

Professor Eucken makes the remark in his book 
on " The Truth of Religion " that great religious 
leaders are men who open the fountains of life for 
men. John Wesley had found the fountain and 
he went forth under its inspiration, and believed 
that he had a message for men and women who 
were dwelling in the twilight of ritualism and 
liturgy, and preached a gospel to the masses. The 
following Sunday morning after his conversion he 
went to St. John's at Bloomsbury and told some- 
thing about the new life that had come to his soul, 
and he preached again in the evening. He is im- 
mediately exiled by the ritualists of the Anglican 
Church. He preaches in a chapel once here and 
there, but immediately they tell him, " never more." 
There is life in the man's experience, and a hunger 
for the masses in his soul that they may know 



THE METHODIST CONTRIBUTION 49 

God, that they may come in contact with eternal 
verities, that they may find unity between them- 
selves and their Creator: and so this man who 
has found life, goes forth to preach from his ex- 
perience and to tell men of the three great doc- 
trines, that are by no manner of means original, 
for they are a part of the great Protestant theol- 
ogy. First, that of justification by faith, of sal- 
vation by self-surrender to the spirit of God; sec- 
ond, an assurance of acceptance, that a man may 
know that he has come into' harmony with the 
Divine Spirit; third, what he calls perfection or 
sanctification ; we of modern day might term it the 
perfectability of human nature. As I say, those 
were not original contributions to theological 
thought. Methodism was not an original contrib- 
utor to dogmatic thought, but rather a great 
effort to open the fountains of life to men, the 
great elemental experiences with the Divine Being, 
by faith, that make for the progress of the indi- 
vidual in its search for light and life and God. 

Now Wesley preached that gospel outside the 
church. They drove him outside, and the story 
of his struggle is oft repeated, when at five and 
six in the morning, as the miners are going to their 
work, he gathers them by the thousand out in the 
field and preaches a gospel that the mass of men 
can understand, and dark furrowed faces, heavy 
with coal dust and grime, are aglow with a joy that 
cannot be dispelled, because they at last realize 
that someone has come to them with a gospel that 



50 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

they can understand and that shall save them. So 
that Methodism is no new dogmatic faith, but 
rather it is a bringing the life of God near to the 
soul of men. As I have remarked, it was a move- 
ment of freedom from an ecclesiastical formalism. 
Wesley goes into the field preaching and so drifts 
loose, as it were, from all that is purely Ang- 
lican. 

So that I would say that in the first place the 
contribution of Methodism to religious liberty was 
a contribution to freedom outside of and beyond 
ecclesiastical ritualism or formalism. It went for 
life, and for the man where he lived. The second 
thing I would say is, that it gave emphasis to the 
great liberty loving movement in the church, which 
was before Wesley, and has been technically called 
Arminianism. Wesley was an Arminian, a pro- 
found believer in the freedom of the soul under the 
grace of God to choose its own destiny. Wesley 
broke with the Calvinists in 1741 when he and 
George Whitefield disagreed on the matter, and 
they separated. In 174*1, you remember, in this 
country Jonathan Edwards preached that tre- 
mendous sermon of his on " Sinners in the hands 
of an angry God," at a little country church in 
Massachusetts. That is an interesting bit of read- 
ing. Whitefield himself was with Edwards in 
that same year, 1741, previous to his break with 
Wesley on the matter of Arminianism. White- 
field remained in this country, labored in this 
country, year after year, a Calvinist, but at this 



THE METHODIST CONTRIBUTION 51 

point I presume I would be justified in saying that 
Jonathan Edwards was the last great giant of the 
old days who held for a militant and thorough- 
going Calvinism. There came after that revival 
under Edwards, a great reaction, and some twenty 
years later, in the year 1769, Wesley sent two of 
his preachers to this country to begin the forming 
and the furthering of the gospel as he had been 
preaching it up and down the island of Great 
Britain ; so that Methodism thus comes over into 
this country with its preachers, with an Arminian 
theology in the main, and preached the same gospel 
to the masses of men that Wesley himself felt, 
bringing living souls nearer to the living God. 

On its civil side, on the side of civil liberty, as 
has been hinted by Professor Rauschenbusch, Wes- 
ley was not much in favor of the liberty of the 
masses. He wrote a very fiery letter against the 
whole matter of the Revolution. He was a Tory 
in his sympathies. But we must remember that 
his preachers came into this country just previous 
to the Revolutionary War, and perhaps were not 
appreciative of the great struggle that was being 
then made ; but in their love for God, for liberty of 
soul and liberty of action, the Methodists became 
a great leavening power, and increased after the 
Revolution with great rapidity, bulwarking and 
establishing every good thing that made for liberty 
and freedom. 

At their first general conference was asked this 
question: What shall be done with a man who 



52 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

buys or sells slaves? And the answer was, He 
shall be expelled from the communion unless 
he buys them for the sake of giving them free- 
dom. 

Bishop Coke, who was sent over here as a general 
superintendent by John Wesley, and Mr. Asbury, 
who was elected a bishop or general superintendent 
by the first general conference of our church, held 
in 1784, went to George Washington and inter- 
viewed him concerning the feasibility of the emanci- 
pation of the slaves in this country, asking him to 
sign a petition favoring their emancipation. Presi- 
dent Washington did not think it expedient to sign 
the petition for the emancipation of slaves, but said 
that if the Assembly took it up he would be glad 
to express his opinion that it was a wise and proper 
thing to do. 

In the year 1844 the Methodist Church, then 
numbering seven hundred thousand members in this 
country, split on the subject of slavery, north and 
south of the Mason and Dixon line. Some four 
hundred thousand people withdrew then and 
formed the Methodist Episcopal Church South. 
Those in the North held that slavery was an in- 
iquitous institution and maintained themselves in 
what is now known as the Methodist Episcopal 
Church. One of the documents Methodism holds 
dear is a letter of Lincoln, given to Bishop Ames 
and three other ministers, who interviewed Lincoln 
in 1864, pledging him their support in the dark 
hours of the Civil War. This letter of commenda- 



THE METHODIST CONTRIBUTION 53 

tion and appreciation of the loyalty of the Metho- 
dist Church in its Northern section to the cause 
of the American Republic is an heirloom in our 
Methodist history. 

It is difficult, perhaps, to say in the concrete 
where and at what time Methodism has made 
its contributions to the liberty of this coun- 
try, except as every man who comes into con- 
scious experience of God's grace and love goes 
forth everywhere, up and down the land, to be 
himself a free man and be identified with every 
good thing that makes for God, for truth, and for 
the advancement of the human race. In these 
masses of the Methodist people, who to-day 
number in the two great divisions of the church, 
north and south, something like five million people 
in the church and something like four million five 
hundred thousand in the Sunday Schools, whose 
young people crowd themselves, some seventy-five 
thousand of them, in three hundred or more edu- 
cational institutions, Methodism is naturally the 
foe of every tyranny, social, ecclesiastical and 
political, and is doing its share and carrying its 
burden for the progress of the human race, in these 
better days. As to the Methodism of the present 
hour, possibly no one is competent to say what 
its contribution is. The Methodist Church, to- 
gether with all Protestant denominations, stands 
staggering, stands perplexed, in the midst of the 
tremendous social tides and upheavals that are 
upon us, a changing order of things in this present 



54 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

moment, which causes all religious denominations 
to, as it were, mark time until we shall more clearly 
get our bearings and understand what is best to 
do. It is a time when a man, if he is to speak 
with any degree of intelligence, must draw near to 
humanity as humanity is living out its life. The 
man who is purely academic, whose liberality is 
scholastic, whose intellectualism is a snobbishness 
and an aristocracy, is perfectly and utterly con- 
temptible these days. The only solution that can 
possibly be made of the great problems of human 
life and liberty to-day must be made by the man 
who is near to humanity, who feels the heart throb, 
the desperate anxiety, the pitiful pathos of human 
sorrow and sin. One may easily withdraw into the 
quiet of the cloister and present programmes, in- 
tellectual and aristocratic, but the only man who 
hnows is the man who is near the human heart and 
life, and feels the dreadful struggle of humanity 
towards righteousness and peace. So if there is 
one thing to-day, it seems to me, we need, it is 
that we shall draw near to the actual human life 
where it is being lived, that we shall feel the 
struggle of all men who are trying somewhere, 
somehow, to find God. The important thing after 
all, the main contribution that you and I may 
make, is that we ourselves go forth to help solve 
these problems of actual men and women living in 
the actual every day modern conditions. We 
stand to-day in this Hebrew synagogue; and I 



THE METHODIST CONTRIBUTION 55 

remember a great Hebrew who one day came to a 
Hebrew synagogue where he was brought up as 
a boy, and he opened the Scriptures to Isaiah, and 
he read some words like this : " The spirit of the 
Lord God is upon me, for he hath anointed me to 
preach good tidings to the poor; He hath sent me 
to proclaim release to the captives, and the recover- 
ing of sight to' the blind, to set at liberty them that 
are bruised, to proclaim the acceptable year of the 
Lord," and closing the book he said to that group 
of people : " This day is this prophecy fulfilled in 
your ears." And the man, the liberal, the worker 
for humanity to-day, who shall demand our ap- 
plause and our praise, is the man who is down close 
to human sorrow and human struggle, it is he to 
whom those immortal words apply, and who can 
say, " The spirit of the Lord hath anointed me 
to release the captive and preach the acceptable 
year of the Lord." 

God's good day is marching on. In vain the 
present calls unto the past; for the past is dead 
unto our cry. Westward the world rolls into light, 
which is coming daybreak everywhere. We need 
more and more of confidence in one another, more 
and more of charity and kindness towards one an- 
other, less and less of dogmas, concerning which 
few of us understand, and more and more of that 
spirit that goes forth to bear the sorrows and 
sins and toils of human life and bring men near to 
God. ; i 



56 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall nevei 

call retreat. 
He is sifting out the hearts of men before His 

judgment seat. 
Be swift, MY soul, to answer Him, be jubilant my 

feet. 

Our God is marching on. 



VI 



THE PRESBYTERIAN CONTRIBUTION TO 
RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

Paul Moore Strayer 

" Historians have not attached sufficient impor- 
tance to the influence of religions on the devel- 
opment or restraint of political liberty," says 
Professor Paul Frederick of the University of 
Ghent. It is not our task to correct this defect 
of history. We are not asked to show the influence 
of religion upon politics, but only to point out the 
special contribution of certain religious ideas and 
doctrines as held and promulgated by various 
groups of religious people. 

The Christian religion heartily accepted and 
honestly practiced makes straight for brotherhood, 
and brotherhood is democratic. But self-govern- 
ment antedates Christianity, and even after the be- 
ginning of the Christian era it was slow in making 
headway. In ancient Greece and Rome we have 
excellent examples of popular government. After 
the Christian truth of brotherhood had been pro- 
claimed, it did not quickly work itself into the 
political life and civil government. In the middle 

ages there were many communes in Europe which 

57 



58 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

were self governing, particularly in Italy. Citi- 
zens of Florence, Venice, Genoa and Milan met 
in the open air and regulated their own affairs by 
universal direct suffrage. But still the idea of 
self government had taken no large hold upon 
Christendom. 

With the fifteenth century great nations arose, 
and there was ushered in another period of im- 
perial centralization. When Luther revolted from 
Rome absolutism was the rule. No such thing as 
popular government was left in Europe save in the 
small, remote Swiss cantons. And Luther did not 
revolt against the political order of his day. 
Luther accepted the rights of the sovereign and re- 
lied upon the princes as his backers. They made 
his reformation possible. He emancipated the 
conscience but not the citizen. 

At the very moment when self government had 
nearly expired in Europe, Calvin came on the scene 
with his new interpretation of Christianity. Now 
this, according to D'Aubigne, " is what distin- 
guishes the reformation of Calvin from that of 
Luther, that wherever it was established it brought 
with it not only truth but liberty." Calvin not 
only set free the conscience but liberated the church 
from temporal power and established a religious 
organization which was self-governing and wholly 
free from the hierarchy. Each parish was a tiny 
republic with universal suffrage, electing its own 
officers and administering its own affairs. 

Anyone who is acquainted with the Geneva of 



THE PRESBYTERIANS 69 

Calvin's time will recognize that individual liberty 
was curtailed by the jurisdiction of the church 
which extended its discipline so as to cover the 
details of conduct in personal and domestic life. 
And yet, as the antagonists of Calvinism acknowl- 
edge, it has powerfully promoted the cause of civil 
liberty. The first reason is that a very definite 
boundary line was drawn between the church and 
the state. " Calvinism," as Professor Fisher says, 
*' rescued the peculiar functions of the church 
from civil authority." Calvinism contended that 
the church and not the government should regulate 
the administration of the sacrament and admit or 
reject communicants, and won out in Geneva for 
the first time in the reformation period. " In this 
feature Calvinism differed from the relation of the 
civil rulers to the Church, as established under the 
auspices of Zwingli, as well as of Luther, and from 
the Anglican system which originated under Henry 
VIII." 

" A second reason why Calvinism has been favor- 
able to civil liberty," here I quote again from 
Professor Fisher, " is found in the republican char- 
acter of its church organization. Laymen shared 
power with ministers. The people, the body of the 
congregation, took an active and responsible part 
in the choice of the clergy, and of all other officers. 
At Geneva, the alliance of the church with the civil 
authority, and the circumstances in which Calvin 
was placed, reduced to a considerable extent the 
real power of the people in church affairs. Calvin 



60 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

did not realize his own theory. But elsewhere, 
especially in countries where Calvinism had to en- 
counter the hostility of the State, the democratic 
tendencies of the system had full room for develop- 
ment. Men who were accustomed to rule them- 
selves in the church, would claim the same privilege 
in the commonwealth." 

But above all other influences which made for 
civil liberty stand the theological doctrines of the 
great Genevan teacher. Luther in his doctrine of 
consubstantiation left divine grace closely tied to 
the sacraments. Calvin laid supreme stress upon 
divine sovereignty and free grace and maintained 
that salvation is not dependent upon any external 
rites or ceremonies, but wholly and solely upon the 
unrestricted grace of God. Calvinism left the in- 
dividual man alone in the presence of his God. 
Not through the church's sacraments, nor through 
any righteousness of his own, but by the sovereign 
will of God was a man to be saved. One man stood 
before God no better than another so far as his 
earthly possessions and attainments were concerned. 
All trappings of royalty, all advantages of birth 
or fortune, all special privilege, counted for noth- 
ing before the decrees of God. Each stood a 
naked soul in the presence of the sovereign God. 

However we may dissent from the teaching of 
Calvin it is easy to see what it did for man. Luther 
gathered about him a powerful group of the 
German nobility to accomplish his break with 
Rome. But Calvin by his very theology induced 



THE PRESBYTERIANS 61 

a disregard for princelings as well as prelates. 
The doctrine of election struck off every shackle 
which man had put upon his fellows. No man had 
a better claim upon the grace of God than any 
other. The destiny of all men rested in the 
sovereign will of the Almighty. " In the presence 
of the awful responsibilities of life," says John 
Fiske, " all distinctions of rank and fortune 
vanished ; prince and pauper were alike the helpless 
creatures of Jehovah and the suppliants of His 
grace." Thus by crushing the individual under 
the sovereign decrees of God, the individual was 
freed from all lesser bondage. 

It is difficult for us to imagine the class dis- 
tinctions of that age, or to enter into the feelings 
of the lower classes. The poor and the weak ac- 
cepted their position and actually thought that 
they were essentially inferior to the rich and 
the influential. The doctrine of predestination 
changed all this. A man need only be numbered 
among the elect and the loud pretensions of poten- 
tates sounded in his ears empty and hollow. The 
soldiers of Cromwell under the impact of this 
mighty doctrine snorted at the assumption of 
superiority on the part of the nobles, and held in 
contempt the great ones of this earth who obviously 
had been elected of God for destruction. 

The aristocrat is naturally an Arminian, for he 
does not fancy that his privileges are an accident or 
by the decree of God, but that they grow out of 
some intrinsically superior worth in himself. The 



62 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

Calvinist's sense of the exaltation of God dwarfs all 
earthly aristocracies and levels all human inequal- 
ities. Bancroft in his history of the United States 
remarks that " the political character of Calvinism 
which with one consent and with instinctive judg- 
ment, the monarchs of that day feared as republi- 
canism, is expressed in a single word — predestina- 
tion. Did a proud aristocracy trace its lineage 
through generations of a highborn ancestry, the re- 
publican reformers, with a loftier pride invaded the 
invisible world and from the book of life brought 
down the record of the noblest enfranchisement, de- 
creed from eternity by the King of kings." When 
a man thus exalts the supreme and sole authority of 
God it dulls the luster of earthly grandeur and gives 
him a resolute, almost contemptuous, disregard of 
popes and kings and gentry. And when he feels 
that he is God's elect, chosen of God to do a special 
work and relying upon God's eternal decrees, let the 
man of title and birth stand out of his way. • The 
result is William the Silent or Cromwell, the Puri- 
tans or the Huguenots, the Covenanters or the 
Ironsides. 

Let me quote two more authorities. The his- 
torian Motley says, " To the Calvinists more than 
to any other class of men the political liberties of 
Holland and England and America are due." 
Greene in his History of England wrote, " As a 
vast and consecrated democracy it stood in contrast 
with the whole social and political framework of 



THE PRESBYTERIANS 6S 

the European nations. Grave as we may count the 
faults of Calvinism, alien as its temper may be in 
many ways from the temper of the modern world, 
it is in Calvinism that the modern world strikes 
its roots, for it was Calvinism that first revealed the 
worth and dignity of man. Called of God and 
heir of heaven, the trader at his counter and the 
digger of the field suddenly rose into equality with 
the noble and the king." 

Calvin was the spiritual father of Coligny, of 
William the Silent and of Cromwell. The French 
Huguenots were a barrier to royal absolutism. 
Under William of Orange the Calvinists of Holland 
solemnly deposed Philip II in the name of self 
government and the States General, declaring that 
the sovereign is made for the people, not the people 
for the sovereign. In Scotland it was John Knox, 
a scholar from Geneva, who broke the rule of Queen 
Mary. In the 16th century, Catholic, Lutheran 
and Anglican Europe were still under absolutism 
with these small centers of political liberty, Switzer- 
land, Holland and Scotland. These little centers 
taught the rest of the world. From Scotland came 
the Puritans and Cromwell's Roundheads who set 
up a republic in England. Calvinists of Holland 
and England brought self-government to America 
and founded the United States. It was in England 
that Voltaire learned religious tolerance, while Ros- 
seau the " Citizen of Geneva," received so strong 
an imprint of Calvinism that he carried to France 



64i FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

his " Social Contract." These sowed the seed 
which produced the French Revolution which was 
thus an indirect product of Calvinism. 

In the conflict between rulers and ruled it is 
moral fiber which in the long run wins. A profli- 
gate nobility must certainly give way before a 
virtuous peasantry. It is frequently charged that 
the Calvinistic doctrine of predestination, culminat- 
ing in the perseverance of saints, must necessarily 
result in a too easy conscience and a dangerous 
laxity of morals. The natural inference from the 
fatalistic tendency of Calvinism is that it is liable 
to dull the edge of moral incentive. Here is an- 
other instance where experience disproves logic, 
only here the Calvinist has the experience and the 
Arminian the logic. The Calvinist need only point 
to history. His moral earnestness has never been 
surpassed, though Dr. Kuyper himself admits it is 
in contradiction to his confession. The Calvinist 
has never led a careless or ungodly life. Calvinism 
developed a harsh type of morality, but it was a 
moral type. Purity and chastity and unflinching 
rectitude were its fruits. It made stern fathers and 
unimpassioned husbands. But the " home as we 
conceive it was the creation of the Puritan," says 
Greene, and in all the history of the Puritans there 
is not an example of divorce. Moreover, Calvin- 
ists were as courageous as chaste. " A coward and 
a Puritan never went together." Those who feared 
no one but God lacked the ordinary sense of fear. 
So it was the uncompromising theology of Calvin 



THE PRESBYTERIANS 65 

which developed moral fiber for the struggle 
against religion and political privilege, and thus 
more than any other force helped save the 
Reformation to the world, and gave it not only a 
democratic church but a democratic state. 

To account for all the facts it must be said that 
Calvinism is in part a product as well as a cause. 
Calvinism makes men like Calvin, but it takes a man 
like John Calvin to make such a system of theology 
or to accept it. This, in parenthesis, is exactly the 
plea of the determinist — a man's choices are 
decided by pre-existent causes. Men of this type, 
of resolute moral purpose and conscious of their 
own rectitude, in contrast with the loose lives of 
those superior in rank, would naturally be drawn 
to a Calvinistic theology. But, given the right 
conditions, Calvinism was also a producer, and cre- 
ated the type of men needed to meet those con- 
ditions. 

The old Calvinism has played its part. It is a 
force which has always been a stay in dark times. 
B:ack of Calvin is Augustine and Paul and the 
Jewish nation in whose theology Paul was deeply 
schooled. When God would use Israel to teach the 
world religion He inspired them with the belief that 
they were a chosen people, an elect race. The key 
to Jewish history is their faith that God had placed 
them in their promised country and that in them 
all the families of the earth should be blessed. 
This indomitable faith kept them separate from 
the nations about them until the fullness of time. 



66 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

Such magnificent egoism which relates the human 
to the divine in some personal and unalterable 
fashion, and makes one feel that his every act and 
emotion rests upon eternal decrees, carries him 
through any opposition. It was so in every crisis 
of religion, so in Reformation times, so when the 
Calvinist sought an asylum in the American 
wilderness. 

The drift to-day is away from Calvinism. But 
should the time ever return when our morals 
get lax and the home loses its sanctity, or the 
aristocracy of wealth arrays itself against the 
aristocracy of character and culture and threatens 
our democratic institutions, then the old faith of 
Calvin and Augustine and Paul and of Israel in 
affliction will come back once more. Calvinism in 
its pure form is more Jewish than Christian; it is 
what the law is to the gospel, what the decalogue 
is to the beatitudes. But Calvinism is suited to 
times of storm and stress ; it is the faith of re- 
formers and pioneers and fighting Protestants. 
There are days when the Decalogue is more needed 
than the parable of the Good Samaritan, and when 
the pressed soul goes to the Westminster Confes- 
sion for his theology more readily than to the Ser- 
mon on the Mount. 

But may they never come again ! 



VII 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF THE REFORMED 
CHURCH IN AMERICA TO RELIG- 
IOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

William Elliot Griffis, D.D. 

It is my privilege to represent in this symposium 
the Reformed Dutch Church in America, of which 
I was a member for twenty years or more, and in 
which I served as pastor in New York; and also 
the Congregational body of churches, in which I 
hold fellowship to-day. 

In my church at Schenectady, in the old ceme- 
tery, are the descendants of Doctor Fuller, the 
physician of the Pilgrim and the Mayflower, and 
the mass of the people were descendants of the set- 
tlers, the free farmers, who, in 1662, left the semi- 
feudal system of Van Rensselaer at Albany and 
bought the land of the Indians and formed what 
was one of the very first free towns in old Dutch 
New York. It gives me great pleasure to tell what 
the Dutch have done — I have no Dutch blood 
whatever myself; I am a descendant from English 
ancestors — in New York and the United States 
for freedom. Their work has been very great, 

and I count them among the leaders of all 

67 



68 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

the Christian denominations of America, for the 
simple reason that they had Republican ideas from 
the first. They came from Holland, — where the 
Hebrews first found a generous welcome and a 
home, so that Amsterdam is one of the great 
Hebrew capitals of the world. It was there that 
the Congregationalists, who were considered an- 
archists in England, also first found a home, be- 
cause all the first Congregational churches in Eng- 
land were promptly thrown into prisons and the 
members hanged or harried, so that they had 
to leave England and go to Middleburg in Hol- 
land, where the first Congregational Church that 
was not arrested or dispersed into prison was 
founded. If I live until next summer I expect to 
go to Holland and put up a bronze tablet, in the 
name of the Congregational Sunday Schools of 
America, to the honor of Robert Browne, who or- 
ganized the first Congregational Church that did 
not get into prison, in the land where William 
Bradford, Governor of the Pilgrims, said, " re- 
ligion was free for all men." 

When the Dutch first came over here, after 
Henry Hudson's discovery of the Hudson River, 
they were all squatters, single men; there was not 
a Dutch woman or child on this continent until 
after 1623. Then, in the beautifully built new 
ship New^ Netherlands there came a band of twenty- 
five Walloon families, and the first women and chil- 
dren from the Netherlands came in that ship in 
1623. Some were left on Manhattan Island, eight 



THE REFORMED CHURCH 69 

of them at the Wallabout — that means the Wal- 
loon's bocht, or bend, at Brooklyn — some where 
Albany is now, and others on the shores of the 
Delaware River. They were French-speaking 
people, Walloons, from the southern Netherlands, 
south of Brussels, where people still live to- 
day who speak the Walloon language, or what 
is now modem French. These good Dutchmen 
came to this wild country, with nothing but forests 
and wild animals about them, bringing their wives 
and children. They came in the spirit of the Dutch 
Republic, where conscience was free, and in which 
Catholic, Congregationalist — considered anar- 
chists at first in England — and people of every 
name and kind of religion, could have absolute free- 
dom inside their own homes. Old Peter Stuyvesant, 
who was the military ruler, made it rough for the 
Hebrews, when the Spaniard drove them out of 
the West Indies, but he was rebuked instantly by 
the company which had the monopoly of the New 
Netherland at that time, for doing what was op- 
posed to the spirit of the free Republic of the 
Netherlands. Then in 1662, one of the blackest 
acts of treachery ever known was committed, dur- 
ing the reign of Charles II. Two British frigates, 
loaded with cannon and troops, came into the Hud- 
son River, in a time of profound peace, after 
Charles II. had hoodwinked the Dutch ambassador, 
and New Netherland was conquered and came under 
English rule. Col. Nichols, who had charge of the 
expedition, was a gentleman, and he safeguarded 



70 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

the rights of the Dutch people, whose was the first 
fully organized church in this country. In New 
York, inside of the fort on Manhattan Island, there 
was a regularly ordained and salaried minister, a 
board of church officers, elders and deacons, fifty 
people who brought their letters from the old 
country, and some who joined on confession of 
faith. The first church in what is now the United 
States of America was the Dutch Reformed Church 
of Manhattan, in 16S9. 

In the writing of our American history, New 
England got the first chance and nine-tenths of 
our history has been written within ten miles of the 
golden dome of Boston. That is the reason we have 
New England preponderating in our books — not 
in reality. I never heard of a scholar who wrote 
largely on American history that knew Dutch. 
John Fiske knew hardly enough to last him over 
night. Mr. Bancroft had to send a young gentle- 
man over to Holland to make researches for him; 
I never heard of an American history the writer 
of which knew Dutch — I mean a great writer, 
like Bancroft or Fiske, or any of the writers of 
American history. Even in the recent great series 
of twenty-seven volumes, published by the Harper 
Brothers, there is a volume on the French, and on 
the Spanish, on this, that and the other; but I am 
not acquainted with real United States history if 
you leave out the Dutch. Eliminate the Dutch 
element, and I do not recognize our so-called na- 
tional history. 



THE REFORMED CHURCH 71 

The Dutch introduced religious freedom on this 
continent from the old Republic, where conscience 
was free. The United Netherlands was the first 
country in Europe where it was free. Long before 
Roger Williams was born, William the Silent, in 
writing the magistrate at Middleburg in 1575, said, 
" I have laid down the rule that as long as a man 
obeyed the laws of the country, no matter what 
his belief, he should be protected." That was 
written in Middleburg where the first Congrega- 
tional Church — which in England would have been 
haled to prison — was being organized. 

When under Charles Stuart, New Netherland 
became a royal English province, it had no charter, 
it had no safeguards of liberty, but the Reformed 
Dutch Church — ninety-five people out of a hun- 
dred in the colony were Netherlanders, or bom of 
them — had the right to elect her own officers. 
They had always done so, and they determined to 
get a charter from King William III of England, 
and they got it ultimately. Yet those British gov- 
ernors left no stone unturned to get the English 
established church fixed in New York. They tried 
every means and device, but the Dutchmen always 
opposed them. Now, it was a great thing in Di- 
vine Providence, I think, that there existed this 
tough conservatism in a great body of Christian 
people who had Republican ideas. The Dutch 
seemed to the English then to be slow. 

We talk about the " slow " Dutch. There isn't 
a country on this earth that is further advanced 



72 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

in civilization that Holland, and if you go there 
and study the people you will believe what I say. 
It was a good thing that we should have a great 
mass of the Dutch ideas and people here, that did 
not give up the Dutch language in the schools 
until about the 3^ear 1800. They held on to the 
Dutch ideas, the Republican ideas. If those peo- 
ple had been English, and spoken English, the 
English governors would also have attempted to 
establish the church in New Jersey and Delaware 
— they left no stone unturned to do it — and with 
their great social prestige they would have drawn 
the young people into the established church, which 
was not wanted. That is one of the things our 
Dutch fathers wanted to leave behind — the inter- 
ference of the magistrate with conscience. So the 
Dutchmen fought the English government — or 
rather the promoters of Church and State — tooth 
and nail. One of the most interesting books is 
at Albany — if not burned in the fire at the Capi- 
tol — a collection of " bills which did not become 
laws," but which showed what the spirit of the 
legislature was — a spirit of liberty, the spirit 
of a free conscience in a free state. The New 
York Dutchmen, reinforced by other " Dissent- 
ers," kept up the warfare of freedom for a hun- 
dred and fourteen years, until, in 1788, they got 
the New York Constitution, the most liberal of all 
the state constitutions at that time, which granted 
to Catholics, Hebrews, and everybody, absolute 
religious liberty. It was iyi New Yorkj not 



THE REFORMED CHURCH 73 

Massachusetts, or anywhere else, that the battle 
for religious freedom for the whole United States 
was mainly won. 

From 1664, when the Dutch obtained the right 
to elect their own officers and to resist the attempts 
of the English governors to establish the Church 
of England here, never more than four out of ten 
counties ever had a state church. There were never 
more than four out of the ten counties in which 
the Church of England was established by law. 
The reason why it did not get established was be- 
cause of the efforts of the people in the Dutch 
Reformed Church — which has to-day three 
churches on Fifth Avenue and fourteen chapels in 
the city of New York, working among the poor as 
well as the rich. They obtained a charter from 
King William the Third, in 1690, which enabled 
them on the basis of law to resist the attempts of 
the English governors to establish a state church. 

Why is it that New York led all state constitu- 
tions in the freedom of religion granted to all de- 
nominations, put it down in the fundamental law of 
the land, and safeguarded it in statute law? Why? 
Because, when King Charles II. took this prov- 
ince it became a royal province, and having no 
charter it was regarded as conquered territory. 
Either it had been conquered from the Dutch, 
and therefore was conquered territory; or else, 
by some claim, more or less valid, it had been 
re-conquered from a foreign country. In any case 
it was a royal province. What does that mean? 



74 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

Having no charter, like the New England colonies, 
it was necessary for the Dutch, for the Scotch, for 
the Irish, for the Catholics, for the Hebrews, for 
everyone who loved liberty, to unite together. If 
you will study the constitutional history of New 
York, you will find it was one struggle after an- 
other, argued on the basis of law, which is older 
than kings, older than republics, and older than 
anything that gains authority by mere name or 
title. On the basis of immutable law, the cham- 
pions of right argued for freedom of speech, for 
freedom of church government, for freedom of 
conscience, until at last, in 1778, everything was 
ripe for permanence. The battle of a hundred and 
fourteen years had been fought and won. If you 
will read the New York constitution you will find 
there is absolute freedom of religion given to every 
man. 

That is the contribution of the Reformed Dutch 
Church of America. There is a big difference 
between a German and a Dutchman. A Ger- 
man is an aristocrat by nature. You cannot use 
the German " Von " in Germany, unless you are 
entitled to it, without being arrested. Now, the 
Dutch were democratic to the last degree, and the 
spirit of the Reformed Dutch Church is democratic. 
The Germans, fleeing from the persecutions of 
Louis XIV. and the archbishops and the Ro- 
man Catholic Church, at a time when the Church 
and the State were one, coming to this country, 
poor and impoverished, as " redemptioners," hav- 



THE REFORMED CHURCH 75 

ing lost their homes and property, were, first 
of all, helped and clothed and fed by the Classis 
of Amsterdam, in the Republic of the United 
Netherlands. Most of these who landed in this 
country went into the Mohawk Valley. They were 
sent thither in large numbers by the British govern- 
ment to raise naval stores or make — what in Ger- 
many and France was supposed could be made all 
the year around — maple sugar. They imagined 
the tree, out of which you could get sugar, yielded 
its sap all the year around. When they came down 
into Pennsylvania, or sailed in more ships from 
Rotterdam, they were helped by the Dutch. In 
later years, after 1800, they separated into two 
distinct bodies, and the German Reformed Church 
calls itself the Reformed Church in the United 
States, while the Dutch hold to the title of Re- 
formed Church in America. 

Although a Congregationalist by brotherhood, 
though I have the highest regard for every 
lover of holiness and humanity, I hold that in 
the United States the Dutch contribution to 
political and religious liberty is greater than that 
of any other single body of men allied in a church 
organization. I am a Congregationalist by con- 
nection and conviction, but I remember I begged 
the money and put up in the English Church at 
Amsterdam a tablet bearing witness to the fact to 
which Governor Bradford testifies in his book of 
Genesis of American history — " Bradford's His- 
tory of the Plymouth Plantation," which is kept 



76 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

in Boston in a fireproof safe at night and under 
closed glass by day — that after being hanged and 
harried and imprisoned, these " Pilgrim Fathers " 
who were the poorest and plainest kinds of people 
— notwithstanding that unsocial snobbishness 
which ruins history, which would make out that the 
Pilgrims were the mightiest of men — after much 
travail of soul and consultation agreed to go 
into the Low Counties and to Amsterdam, " where 
they heard religion was free for all men." They 
heard aright. These Separatists first tried to 
escape from Boston, in England. They were be- 
trayed and put in prison and men, women and 
children scattered. Then they again attempted 
flight in the spring, and went over toward the 
great outlet looking toward Holland northeast of 
them. There, as you know, while they were on 
the beach, the men started first in the boats, ac- 
cording to the orders of the Dutch captain of the 
ship. When they got on board they saw three 
or four hundred men coming down the hill with 
bills and swords and axes to capture them. An- 
chor was hoisted, the ship sailed, and the women 
and children were left alone on the home-strand. 
The ship got into a storm and carried the ex- 
iles all the way to Norway, but finally, in one 
way or another the whole party reached Amster- 
dam. The records of the Reformed churches show 
that these refugees had to be clothed and taken 
care of and fed. 

These outcasts from England were poor waifs 



THE REFORMED CHURCH 77 

and foundlings in the world. Yet when they got 
to Amsterdam they had perfect freedom. In the 
seven congregations of exiles there was such per- 
fect freedom that it intoxicated them. In those 
little churches there was much quarreling. One 
man, who, as Bradford says, had a " crackt brane," 
found fault with the minister's wife because she wore 
a very beautiful dress, cut low in the neck, and she 
wore sleeves, and cork-soled shoes such as ladies of 
her class wore, and this " crackt braned " brother 
found fault with her, hurling the scripture at her, 
from Ezekiel and Jeremiah. They had it hot and 
heavy for months. Finally the " crackt braned " 
fellow and his father were both excommunicated. 

When their leader, John Robinson, found this 
great idea of soul freedom was likely to be lost in 
a petty squabble about how a woman should dress, 
he left the quarreling people at Amsterdam and 
went down to Leyden. You can see the paper in 
the archives to-day, where they made application. 
They say they will take care of themselves and do 
their own work. The burgomaster replies, " such 
people are welcome." If there is one city in 
Europe that has the right to be called the metro- 
politan city, ** the mother of the United States 
in Europe," it is Leyden. From this place the 
Dutch came in large numbers to New Netherland. 
To Leyden had come hundreds of the Walloons, 
the French-speaking Protestants, driven out of the 
Netherlands in 1567 by the Spaniards. With a 
hundred thousand others they made Holland great. 



78 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

Many of the regiments under William the Si- 
lent consisted wholly of Walloons, speaking the 
French language. The Walloon men brought their 
women and children and made their homes in New 
York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware. 
The Pilgrim Fathers, who were there eleven years, 
and many of the leading Huguenots who came to 
America eighty years later, made Leyden their 
base of recuperation and supplies, before crossing 
the Atlantic ; so that Leyden has nourished and 
sent forth four great strains of the American 
people. I 

The Congregationalists had to fly from England 
and go over to Holland, but they left Amsterdam 
in order not to lose a great jewel in the chaff of 
a minor question. They came down to Leyden. 
Plain people as to the rank and file they were led 
by four or five great, magnificent men. The young 
and strong embarked for America. The old peo- 
ple stayed in Leyden and died there, and were all 
dead by 1655, and after that you find none of their 
records or names in the archives. The Pilgrim 
company in the Mayflower was largely made up of 
men bom in England, but whose children were 
nearly all born in Holland, most of them using 
Dutch and going to the Dutch schools. I have 
been through the archives of Holland again and 
again. You can find public schools, sustained by 
taxation where boys and girls were educated alike, 
as far back as the twelfth century. The girls did 
not get into the public schools in Massachusetts 



THE REFORMED CHURCH 79 

until after the Revolution. In Manhattan they 
were from the first educated together. 

The Congregationalists of England came over 
to Holland. Why did they leave England .f* 
Why ? Because they had in the Dutch Republic a 
free printing press. Printing was free in the 
Netherlands long before it was free in England. 
Twenty-four editions of the New Testament and 
twelve editions of the Bible were printed in the 
low countries before one edition of the Holy 
Scriptures was printed in England. 

In 16^1, Holland, poor little Holland, had to 
reopen the eighty-year fight with Spain. The 
Dutch wanted every cartridge and man; the boys 
of the Pilgrims were enlisting in the Dutch army 
and navy — from which we got the red and white 
stripes in the American flag, without any doubt, in 
my estimation, because Holland had a flag of seven 
stripes, red and white, representing the Republic ; 
the girls were marrying Dutchmen. They must 
emigrate or be swallowed up by the Dutch. There 
were seven nationalities represented in the Pilgrim 
company. There was Miles Standish, a Roman 
Catholic — for the evidence shows this. He never 
joined the Pilgrim church and he was a very liberal 
man in his viev/s. There were Irishmen, Scotch- 
men, Englishmen, Welsh, French, Walloon and 
Dutch people in the Pilgrim party, either as wives, 
husbands, fathers, mothers, or children. These 
great souls could stand Roger Williams, the 
radical — the man that was steeped and saturated 



80 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

in Dutch ideas, Republican ideas and notions of 
toleration and freedom of conscience. They could 
stand Miles Standish, the Roman Catholic, and 
Roger Williams, the radical. They had different 
phases of belief among themselves, but they all sat 
down to the communion table together, they were 
brothers. There is a vast difference between 
the Puritans and the Pilgrims although many 
after-dinner speakers do not seem to know it. 
The Pilgrims separated Church and State. When 
the Puritans — high-souled men with all their 
narrowness — got on virgin soil, they came under 
the influence of the Pilgrims, and in time they 
adopted the Congregational form of government. 
It took them a long time to give up the idea that 
the magistrate should regulate the conscience of 
men. 

To-day — to close these remarks — I think Ave 
have very largely shed a good deal of the Puritan 
inheritance, so far as it allied Church and State; I 
hope we will never shed their moral ideas — for 
they were Hebrews under another name — they 
honored the Old Testament far more than the New ; 
but the Pilgrims, believing in the separation of 
Church and State, believing in freedom of con- 
science, purified and sweetened by their afflictions, 
sorrows, and exile in a foreign land, dictated in a 
large sense the future of New England. Their 
work and that of the Dutch have constituted the 
chief constructive power in making the United 
States what it is, for all we know of Federal govern- 



THE REFORMED CHURCH 81 

ment came from Holland, not England; the Dutch 
deserve the credit for that cosmopolitan spirit 
which allowed Hebrew and Christian, Catholic and 
Protestant, to live together in peace and joy. Al- 
though I have in me no Dutch blood, and none of 
the Pilgrim blood, so far as I can find by tradition 
or documents, I am glad as a student who believes 
that the history of the United States can never be 
written by anyone who does not know Dutch thor- 
oughly — to bear this testimony. 



VIII 

THE UNITARIAN CONTRIBUTION TO RE- 
LIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

L. Walter Mason, D.D. 

The Unitarian Church has contributed to Re- 
ligious and Civil Liberty just in so far as it has 
helped to free man's spirit. Doctrines change, 
laws on the statute books change, for better, for 
worse, according as the mind of man is progres- 
sive or reactionary. Liberty comes not through 
some outward event — the kingdom of God comes 
not by observation because it must come in and 
through the inner personality of man. 

I would not be understood as crediting all 
people who have borne the Unitarian name with 
being the promoters of freedom. Nor do I claim 
that all, even of its accredited spokesmen, have 
been fully conscious of the principle which gave 
the Unitarian Church its being. Had they been, 
there never would have been occasion for the or- 
ganization of Free Religious Societies, and " West- 
ern issues " might not have arisen to rend its 
councils. 

Many worthy and honest souls have concerned 

themselves only with their parochial cares, and 

82 



THE UNITARIAN CONTRIBUTION 83 

the things most commonly beheved, so interested 
in the transient and the incidental, as to fail 
to sense the current in the mighty stream of the 
religious life. 

Every reformation, whether in music, litera- 
ture, politics, or religion manifests itself first in 
a protest, — a protest against arbitrary restric- 
tions imposed on the expression of life. A ref- 
ormation in any field of human interest seems to 
be prompted by the same motive, the desire for 
a more satisfying expression of life. And man 
is such a unit that that which relates to one part 
of his nature affects him in all. 

Unitarianism began in such a protest, and can 
never be understood so long as it is thought of 
as merely a doctrinal variation from the ortho^ 
dox church of one hundred years ago. Some 
even of our own denominational historians, in 
tracing the subtle doctrinal thread which seems 
to run back to Italy, Holland, and England, fail 
to perceive the movement in its larger relation- 
ships. Channing declared that Unitarianism " be- 
gan as a protest against the rejection of reason." 
(We need to remember that Channing used the 
word " reason " in the comprehensive sense which 
includes the entire conscious nature of man.) 

Unitarianism was a protest against an authori- 
tative supernaturalism — a supematuralism which 
denied to man the right to the exercise of the 
legitimate functions of the mind. In other words, 
it was a new expression of humanism. Not the 



84 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

philosophical humanism of Comte, nor that modern 
form of humanism known as pragmatism, or the 
humanism in the academic sense which is nour- 
ished on a special diet in our colleges. But in 
the broad sense in which it is applied to that re- 
volt against mediaeval ecclesiasticism which mani- 
fested itself at the beginning of the modern age; 
a movement in which we have always recognized 
our indebtedness to Greek thought. 

The nature of the Unitarian movement was ob- 
scured from the first by being given a doctrinal 
name, which naturally implied a doctrinal inter- 
est. And in this country where we have been 
content to' cover all manner of wide divergencies 
of belief by the twO' terms, orthodox and hetero- 
dox, our labels have given but slight indication 
of the content of any movement. 

We can understand the animating spirit of the 
liberal church in America better when we note 
the way in which the German people think of 
and designate these divergent forms of religious 
experience in their national life. There, where 
the same wide divergencies and sharp antagonisms 
exist, and exist all in one State Church, they are 
recognized as having their rise far back in Ger- 
man history in two distinct impulses, viz., the 
Reformation, always in our mind associated with 
Luther, and in German humanism equally asso- 
ciated with the names of Kant and Goethe. In 
the Reformation the entire energy is focused on 
a signal object, the salvation of the soul. In hu- 



THE UNITARIAN CONTRIBUTION 85 

manism, man is to find the meaning of life in the 
full play of all his faculties. In the Reforma- 
tion God is thought of almost wholly as the trans- 
cendent power. In humanism God is' the im- 
manent power. The Reformation belittles man's 
power, humanism glorifies it. These opposing 
ideals in the State Church are designated in Ger- 
many to this day as the Reformation and hu- 
manism. 

The motives producing the antithesis in Amer- 
ica are essentially the same as those in Germany. 
With us the term " reformation " has a less defi- 
nite meaning; several streams flowed into our ref- 
ormation, some more acrid elements, more de- 
structive to sensitive blossoms of nature than any- 
thing which went out from the pre-eminently hu- 
man Luther. So, in thinking of religious history 
here, in place of the term reformation, we should 
more properly say supernaturalism as opposed to 
humanism. 

But the humanism of America (to be more 
specific, the humanism of Channing), was not that 
of the Greeks who took life joyously, and played 
the game brilliantly and beautifully, nor the hu- 
manism of Germany which drew largely on their 
Greek forerunners, and added to it a wealth of 
philosophical thought all their own, but the hu- 
manism of a child of the Puritans, nourished on 
the moral seriousness of the Old Testament. It 
was a protest not so much in the interest of the 
intellectual and esthetic faculties, as for the sake 



86 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

of the moral and spiritual nature. It was a 
humanism deeply rooted in the spiritual life and, 
so far as the untrained Puritan imagination to 
forms of beauty would permit, it blossomed in 
poetry, as humanism always has. The Ameri- 
can humanist centered his assault against the 
despotic repression of a supernatural absolutism. 
With startling audacity he declared : " I am 
surer that my rational nature is from God than 
that any book is the expression of His will "... 
" Never, never do violence to your rational na- 
ture. He who in any case admits doctrines which 
contradict reason, has broken down the great 
barrier between truth and falsehood. . . . Faith 
in its power lies at the foundation of all other 
faiths."* And again: "All minds are of one 
family, of one origin, one nature, kindled from 
one divine flame." So with spiritual passion he 
battered down the bars which had so long con- 
fined the mind of America, and straightway we 
see the signs of mental and spiritual freedom, the 
trying of spiritual wings unaccustomed to flight. 
It is a Puritan freedom, however, which speaks in 
the " Psalm of Life," the " Chambered Nautilus," 
the " Problem," " Thanatopsis," and the " Hymns 
of Whittier." 

Did the limits of this paper permit it would be 
profitable to trace the outflowering of this Ameri- 
can humanism in the writings of Ralph Waldo 

Emerson. 
* Channing. 



THE UNITARIAN CONTRIBUTION 87 

Another result of this spiritual humanism not 
so evident as the outflowering of New England 
poetry, but just as immediate and more far- 
reaching, was social. It was the vital human in- 
terest which came home with the most force to 
Channing. His first utterance to attract general 
attention was an anti-war sermon. The Peace So- 
ciety of Massachusetts was organized in his study : 
But his opposition to war and to slavery was not 
prompted by economic considerations, but because 
of the irreverence and the indignities to which it 
subjected men. He said, " Let the worth of the 
human being be felt . . . and the main pillar of 
war will fall." It was as a moral evil war must 
be abolished. His argument against flogging in 
the navy was simply the indignant exclamation, 
" What, strike a man ! " 

Channing's idealism has its counterpart in the 
profound social consciousness and practical hu- 
manitarianism of Theodore Parker. 

Channing, Parker and Emerson, in common with 
all the great humanists, who have drawn their in- 
spiration from their perception of the spiritual 
nature of man, their reverence for the inner per- 
sonality of man, laid the deep foundation of de- 
mocracy, and yet democracy, — that democracy 
which would find the whole solution in economics, 
misunderstands the humanists. For the hu- 
manists, finding their interests in man because of 
the quality of his being, have a keen appreciation 
of distinctions and diff'erences which give them 



88 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

the flavor of aristocracy ; something which always 
arouses the antagonism of the democracy which 
behttles quality and magnifies quantity, which de- 
nies distinctions and glorifies sameness, the de- 
mocracy which cannot tell what the word of God 
is until the votes are counted. 

The hope of the world is in democracy, but it 
must be a democracy resting on reverence for 
man's inner personality. And not simply on the 
demand that man shall be well-fed and well-clothed 
and housed, and well-educated, and have time in 
which to enjoy himself. Democracy resting on a 
pure naturalism is only a society for the preven- 
tion of cruelty of rational animals. That leads 
only into a blind alley, — at best a barren self- 
culture, — a game not worth the candle. But 
with a sense of the value and sanctity of each 
person, as a child of God, possessing in himself 
somewhat the nature and quality of God, and 
therefore reflecting His life and law, and con- 
tributing at least in a small measure to the under- 
standing of the divine nature and law, it becomes 
necessary not only in religion but in social and 
political life, that we should have the fullest meas- 
ure of realization which even the humblest citizen 
can receive and reflect. 

Jesus met the appeal for an authoritative state- 
ment with the question, " Judge ye not of your- 
selves what is right ? " As sons of God men 
should not think like abject slaves. It was in 
this appeal which Jesus made to the spiritual na- 



THE UNITARIAN CONTRIBUTION 89 

ture of man that the apostle saw the liberating 
power, and protesting against the authority of all 
outward rite and law, urged his followers to stand 
fast in the freedom wherewith Christ hath made 
them free. 

It was to the inner life of man himself that 
Jesus made his appeal, and that other prophetic 
minds have made a kindred appeal detracts noth- 
ing from its force. Plato proclaimed that " Man 
is governed by his idea of good " ; Kant that " He 
guides himself by the conception of law " ; and 
Goethe declares that, " Man alone can perform 
the impossible. He distinguishes, chooses, and 
judges. He can impart to the moment duration." 
" And in man's nature," says Channing, " are 
marks of a divine origin, and the pledges of a 
celestial inheritance." Emerson tells us : " Let 
man then learn the revelation of all nature and 
all thought to his heart; this, namely, that the 
highest dwells in him, that the sources of nature 
are in his own mind, if the sentiment of duty is 
there." 

The only possible enduring foundation of either 
religious or civil liberty is the belief in the worth 
and the trustworthiness of our common human 
nature. Tyranny, either political or ecclesiasti- 
cal, rests on the conviction that man is too base 
to govern himself, and must be governed by the 
divine authority of King or Church. And prog- 
ress in human betterment is equally dependent on 
the conviction that man is a progressive and an 



90 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

ascending being. This assertion will be verified 
by observation and experience in social service 
work. The people who oppose the advances of 
welfare work for dependent and delinquent chil- 
dren, for the feeble-minded, the insane, and pris- 
oners, are always those who lack faith in these 
unfortunate people and who think only of what 
may be done to and for them, lacking the faith 
in what they may do for themselves. This is so 
well known that social workers have come to ex- 
pect co-operation from the devotees of the old 
theology only to the extent of providing alms or 
relief. 

It was not, therefore, a mere coincidence that 
the assertion of the dignity and worth of hu- 
man nature fired a generation of philanthropists 
and reformers. The ambition of the leaders of the 
Unitarian Church was not to create a new church, 
but a better nation, a new humanity. So, instead 
of sending out an army of apostles to build 
churches, there went out from the influence of 
Channing, Dorothea Dix to reform the prisons and 
build hospitals for the insane of America ; Horace 
Mann, to establish the public school system of 
America; Dr. Samuel G. Howe, to set free the 
mind shut in by deafness and blindness. 

There never has been any sectarian labels or 
limitations on either the reforms or the philan- 
thropies of Unitarians. They have built many 
hospitals and asylums, but the desire to honor 
their church was never great enough to lead them 



THE UNITARIAN CONTRIBUTION 91 

to give a sectarian name to an institution intended 
for our common humanity. 

Presidents Jefferson, John Adams and John 
Quincy Adams, Chief Justice Marshall, Charles 
Sumner, Frederick Douglass, Mary A. Livermore, 
and Julia Ward Howe are names of representative 
Unitarians whose great services to freedom, both 
civil and religious, were the outcome of this form 
of faith. 

Thomas Starr King wore out his life, not in 
building churches on the Pacific coast, but in sav- 
ing California to the Union. Our civil liberty has 
been fortified in no small measure by the civil 
service reform, a contribution to American politi- 
cal life made chiefly by our small fellowship. 
The agitation for the reform was started by 
Representative Jencks of Rhode Island. It was 
taken up by James Freeman Clarke, Henry W. 
Bellows, Dorman B. Eaton, and George William 
Curtis; and in the Senate, its first and most pow- 
erful advocates were Senators Hoar and Burn- 
side. All these men were Unitarians. 

If " Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," 
this does not mean that we shall burden ourselves 
with military taxation, — that has often been the 
way to lose liberty, — it means that we shall cease- 
lessly guard and defend " soul liberty," the free- 
dom of thought and speech, the freedom of the 
inner personality of man. If man's mind is free, 
he may be depended upon to break down all con- 
fining walls, whether ecclesiastical or political. 



IX 



THE UNIVERSALIST CONTRIBUTION TO 
RELIGIOUS AND CIVIL LIBERTY 

Isaac M. Atwood, D.D. 

Liberalism in religion is both an idea and a 
spirit. It sustains a relation to religion in general 
similar to that which democracy sustains to politics 
and government. Both spring from a common 
root. That root is the perception of the large pre- 
rogatives of human nature, and the resulting con- 
viction that it must have scope. Everything 
hinges on the question, whether man is a fallen 
being or a risen being. If a risen being, he may 
be expected to rise further. Democracy says: 
Make room for him. He will be as big as the 
political frame provided for him. 

Freedom in religion has the same connotations. 

Its conception of man as a spiritual child of God 

makes loud demands for his self development and 

self expression. He belongs to an order of being, 

not only of large discourse, looking before and 

after, but one " holding commerce with the skies," 

in Milton's phrase : whose power of attainment waits 

on his liberty of thought and action. As Dr. 

Montessori has found the secret of the rapid and 

92 



THE UNIVERSALISTS 93 

harmonious development of the child of careful 
and ample provision for its spontaneous activities 
interfered with as little as possible by the obtrusion 
of adult notions of what a child should do and be, 
so the liberal discovery in Religion is, that freedom 
of the spirit is the law of the life of the evolution 
of the spirit. 

The Universalist note in the liberal symphony 
was struck at a very early period. We hear its 
first distinct cadences in Paul the apostle. By 
the Fourth Century it reckons the chief names in 
the Christian calendar as its oracles — Clement of 
Alexandria, Pantaenus, Gregory, Thaumaturgus, 
Pamphilius, Didymus, Dionysius, Gregory Naz- 
ianzen, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Origen. 

This first development of Universalism is plainly 
a natural and logical outcome from the original 
Gospel. I think it is impossible for any fair and 
comprehensive mind to acquaint himself with the 
views of these Universalist fathers, and of the 
Alexandrian School generally, and compare them 
with the very different views introduced soon after, 
and that dominated Christian thought for 1500 
years, including the long night of the Middle 
Ages, and not see how superior in point of reason- 
ableness, sweetness and light the former were, and 
how different and freer and better would have been 
the civilization of the period, if it had been per- 
vaded with the earlier religion. That theological 
and religious strain has a quality distinctly 
broader, saner, simpler than any other that ap- 



94 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

pears in the same era. It is like the difference 
between the philosophy of Plato and the physics 
of Aristotle, and those of the Schoolmen a thou- 
sand years later. 

Modern Universalism, which has had its organic 
development mostly in America, was at first — in 
the persons of Murray and Winchester and Ballou 
and their confreres, a vision and a revelation. 
They saw a great light. It allured them, fasci- 
nated them, inspired, — one may say almost intox- 
icated them. The way in which their fervid 
message was received diverted it into a protest. 
It is an interesting speculation, now merely aca- 
demic, what would have been the history of 
American Universalism, if the great and generous 
conception of the Divine Being and of His plans, 
of the meaning and outcome of Christianity, and 
of the intrinsic worth of a human soul, with which 
the first preachers of Universalism in America 
were possessed and inspired, had been given any 
measure of hospitality by the ministers and 
churches of that period. To me it is clear that 
an access of spiritual light and energy, greatly 
needed, would have been experienced by organized 
religion, and the sect, everywhere spoken against, 
would have come to its own proper estate, as a 
partner in the common life of the churches, and 
a liberal contributor to the common religious 
health and wealth and joy. 

As it actually happened, they were compelled 
to be insurgents. Having been greeted as enemies 



THE UNIVERSALISTS 95 

and destroyers, it seemed incumbent on them to 
make good their title. I do not stand to approve 
all the doctrines or attitudes of the earlier Univer- 
salists — nor for that matter of the later — but 
the closest acquaintance and study of them awak- 
ens on the whole admiration and sympathy. 

They were largely from the yeomanry of the 
nation; men and women of brain and force and 
independence; in natural alliance with what has 
been styled " JefFersonian simplicity " ; untram- 
meled by fashion and custom in their thinking and 
habits ; marked everywhere by their inclination to 
sympathize with the " under dog " in all public 
conflicts ; hospitable, wholesome, hearty in their 
home life ; and by social and civic gravitation on 
the side of freedom and the rights of man. It 
was inevitable that wherever they were planted, 
and they had a quite wide distribution in the 
Northern States, and a considerable following in 
the older Southern States, they should dissem- 
inate unconventional usages and liberal practices 
in politics and religion and social life. 

The temptation is strong to particularize. But 
I deny myself, except for one sample instance. 
In the early part of the nineteenth century, laws 
on the statute books of Massachusetts, Vermont 
and New Hampshire, and attempted to be put on 
the statutes of Maine, taxed every freeholder, of 
whatever religious or non-religious stripe, to sup- 
port the " standing order " — the Congregational- 
ists. The removal of this iniquity and disgrace 



96 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

from the laws of these commonwealths, was ac- 
complished by Universalis ts, who took the initi- 
ative, pursued the matter unflinchingly, and saw 
it through the legislatures. This prevalent trend 
of the denomination, reinforced by the mighty and 
persistent protest against dreadful dogmas, which 
they have done as much, to say the least, as any 
one instrumentality of Divine Providence, to make 
odious and effete, gives Universalists an indefeas- 
ible claim to a place in the first rank of those who 
have borne witness, often at great cost, in behalf 
of the sacred principles of civic and spiritual free- 
dom which are the birthright of all the sons and 
daughters of God. 



THE CONTRIBUTION OF RELIGIOUS 

RADICALS TO RELIGIOUS AND 

CIVIL LIBERTY 

Edwin D. Mead, A.M. 

The different sects and types of doctrine having 
been taken care of in previous papers, there seems 
to be a residuum, the body of the unclassified; and 
this has been turned over to me, perhaps as the 
most nondescript man at command for the service. 
I am willing indeed to assume the duty, for my 
admiration for the men to whom I ask your atten- 
tion is profound. Turning to the religious rad- 
icals, the unclassified, none of us, however regular 
or irregular, can fail to pay to them our tribute. 
Think of the immense service for education, for 
civil liberty, that was rendered only yesterday in 
Spain by Ferrer; think of the immense influence 
for civil and religious liberty, for social inspiration 
all over the world, rendered in Italy by Mazzini ; of 
the mighty influence in France of Victor Hugo, 
and a century further back of Rousseau, who more 
than almost anybody else in his period affected the 
educational and the political thought of Europe. 

His was the only portrait that we know to have 

97 



98 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

hung above the desk of Immanuel Kant. Think 
of the influence in our time of Tolstoi in Russia; 
think of the influence of Lessing, and of Kant him- 
self in Germany; think of the influence in these 
later times in England of Charles Dickens, of 
those noble women, George Eliot and Harriet 
Martineau, of Carljle and Ruskin ; of the contrast 
in England only the other day, when that sharp 
crisis was on, when it was the religious radicals, the 
unclassified, the nondescript, John Morley, Her- 
bert Spencer, Frederick Harrison, who rose up 
amidst all the wickedness and injustice of the Boer 
War to remind England of her duty, when every 
bishop on the bench save one or two was silent or 
whitewashed the iniquity. 

We may never forget these things; and in 
America we may never forget, whatever our grade 
of regularity or orthodoxy, the services of the great 
unclassified, the religious radical, the free-thinker. 
If we were to name three men of the last genera- 
tion here in America who perhaps more than any 
others influenced our thought, we should largely 
agree in naming Ralph Waldo Emerson, Theodore 
Parker, and Abraham Lincoln, men who were put 
out of the synagogue, or went out, or like Abraham 
Lincoln never went in. It is unnecessary here 
to say anything about the religious influence of 
Theodore Parker and Ralph Waldo Emerson. We 
have very recently been celebrating the Parker cen- 
tennial. I would rather in speaking of religious 
radicals and their influence upon religious and civil 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 99 

liberty in America, call your attention to three of 
the founders of this great American commonwealth, 
Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and Thomas 
Paine. You could not name three men among 
those who formulated the principles which Amer- 
ican democracy stood for then, and the Republic 
was destined to stand for in history, who stated 
those principles more powerfully than these three 
men, none of them belonging to churches, none of 
them men of religious " regularity," all of them 
men whom the orthodox and the regulars in 
their day were in the habit of saying had no re- 
ligion at all. That character was given them so 
strongly and so persistently by the religious men 
who in that time set the tone, that they are hardly 
yet freed from it in the minds of many men. 

This emancipation of reputations and of names 
is generally a slow process, although sometimes 
it is a fairly rapid process. It is something over 
forty years ago that I came to Boston as a boy 
from New Hampshire; and I remember well the 
feeling in New Hampshire among good orthodox 
people, and the feeling in Boston then among good 
orthodox people, about Theodore Parker. Why, 
his name was a red rag in pretty much all reput- 
able religious society of any pretension to ortho- 
doxy. Two or three years ago, some of us went 
out to Chicago to take part in the celebration there 
of the Theodore Parker centennial. Among the 
addresses which I was invited to give during that 
week was one on Parker before the students of the 



100 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

theological department of Northwestern Univer- 
sity, as many of you know, a Methodist institu- 
tion; and I was most heartily welcomed by the 
head of the theological department, and most 
kindly listened to and warmly applauded by that 
large body of young men. That is one index of 
the movement that has gone on among us in forty 
years. But to this day America is full of men 
who think of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jef- 
ferson and Thomas Paine as almost enemies of 
religion, or as men who had no religion to speak 
of. Perhaps one reason for it in the case of Jef- 
ferson is the reason referred to by Dr. Griffis in 
his paper that our history has been so largely 
written by New Englanders ; and the people of 
New England back in Thomas Jefferson's time, 
especially the more influential members of society, 
the cultivated classes, were so largely Federalists, 
to whom the name of Jeff^erson was a red rag. 
Never was a man the victim of greater injustice 
than Thomas Jefferson suffered for two genera- 
tions from those classes in New England. 

As many of you know, the leaders of the Revo- 
lution were, many of them, men who thought essen- 
tially as Jefferson and Franklin. Washington 
was a member of the Church of England, but 
Washington himself had little " orthodoxy " to 
speak of, as my studies show me. Deism, the old- 
fashioned eighteenth-century Deism, was very 
prevalent among the leading founders of the Amer- 
ican republic. We hear very little about the 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 101 

" irreligion " of John Adams, he has never been 
held up to conspicuous gaze as a dangerous thinker, 
yet as matter of fact his religious opinions were 
essentially the same, so far as definition goes, as 
those of Jefferson, and he held his heresies in a 
more unpleasant and unattractive way. If you 
will read the correspondence in their later life 
between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, which 
was to no inconsiderable extent upon philosophical 
and religious subjects, I think you will be im- 
pressed by the greater attractiveness, warmer 
imagination, and more philosophical character of 
Jefferson's attitude toward religion, which alto- 
gether is very much the attitude of most radical 
and rational men to-day. 

What was the religion of these three great 
religious radicals who have such prominence 
among the founders of the republic of the United 
States, the religion of Franklin and Jefferson and 
Thomas Paine? I revive for your recollection a 
scene in which the religion of Benjamin Franklin 
found one very dramatic expression. It was 
toward the close of the Constitutional Convention 
of 1787, of which he was a member, having come 
home a year or two before from his distinguished 
diplomatic career in France. The convention was 
nearly shipwrecked more than once through the 
extreme and almost irreconcilable differences of 
opinion among the delegates. It was when mat- 
ters were at their worst that Benjamin Franklin, 
I think the oldest member of the convention, rose 



102 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

and proposed that from that day on the conven- 
tion be opened every day by prayer. He said, 
substantially : " We have sat here deliberating dur- 
ing these weeks, and we have come almost to 
failure ; we have roamed through the nations of 
antiquity to find some models that would guide us, 
we have looked through the modem nations of 
Europe, but we are all at sea, and apparently no 
nearer agreement than ever. I remember how, 
back in the early days of the Continental Congress, 
the body which declared independence in this very 
room, our deliberations were each day opened by 
prayer. We were guided through that terrible 
conflict, I believe, by Divine Providence. I think 
that this convention should go to the Father of 
Light for illumination, and open its deliberations 
every day by prayer." He continued to express 
his sense of the Divine Providence which had guided 
America in her former great struggle, he spoke 
of his long life and his varied political experience, 
and he said : " The firm conviction to which I have 
come is that God rules in the affairs of men; and 
if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without 
His notice, an empire cannot rise without His aid." 
He appealed to the sacred Scriptures, expressing 
his veneration for the great Scriptures which had 
guided the fathers. 

Some of you, students in political history, know 
the result of Franklin's action. His motion was 
lost. Franklin, in giving an account of it after- 
wards, said that he found only three or four to 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 103 

support it. Hamilton opposed it. Hamilton was 
actuated apparently a good deal by the feeling 
of the woman aboard ship in a terrible storm. She 
went to the captain and asked what the chances 
were, and the captain frankly told her they were 
desperate, that " the best we can do now is to trust 
in Providence." " Oh," she cried, " has it come 
to that ? " That was about the feeling of Alex- 
ander Hamilton. He said : " If we should begin 
to pray now, and it should get out that we were 
praying, when we hadn't done it before, the 
country would think we were desperate." Frank- 
lin thought it would be a good thing if the country 
did find out precisely that. Another member said : 
" We know very well that the reason we haven't 
had any prayers is that there isn't money in the 
treasury to pay for a clergyman." That was the 
kind of discussion by which Franklin's proposal 
was side-tracked. But the point is that the pro- 
posal was made, and it was backed by one of the 
most earnest speeches in the convention, and 
proposed and earnestly supported by Benj- 
amin Franklin. And it illustrates Franklin's 
life. 

Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas 
Paine, these names have become • in so many 
" regular " circles synonymous with irreligion. I 
wish there were in the Senate of the United States 
to-day a lot of politicians, a lot of statesmen, as 
prominent in political affairs as were those men 
then, or whose words showed half the devotion to 



104 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

religious thought, to religious subjects, to religious 
aspirations, shown by the words of those men. 

I had occasion at the Franklin centennial half a 
dozen years ago to look through all the pages of 
Franklin's works, pencil in hand, for two pur- 
poses: I wanted to mark every passage in his 
works which related to war and peace — and I 
assure you that an equal body of doctrine cannot 
be brought together from the works of any of his 
contemporaries — and to mark the passages which 
had to do with Franklin's religion. Although I 
have always been a student of Franklin, the result 
of that critical examination was to me a revela- 
tion. From early life, all through his life, 
Franklin's interest in religious matters, in 
religious men, in religious thought, was pro- 
found. He had a brief sandy and skeptical 
period, but it did not much affect the deep things. 
He once went through the work of revising the 
liturgy of the Church of England, in order to fit 
it better to modem thought. He was always think- 
ing of religious things. One of his eulogists has 
spoken of him as the most consummate Christian 
of his time. Whether that is true or not, the rea- 
sons by which this admirer, one of his prominent 
biographers, supports his judgment are very intel- 
ligent reasons. He shows that there was no man 
in his time who had a broader spirit of fellowship, 
of toleration, of brotherhood with all kinds of men. 
We know of his relations with the Unitarians of 
his time, with some of the Roman Catholics of his 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 105 

time. His breadth of fellowship was universal; 
and surely if there ever was a man who spent his 
time going about doing good, it was Benjamin 
Franklin. I can think in the annals of time of no 
other man who was more industrious in doing good, 
which is a pretty good test of religion — Jesus 
Christ's test ; I can think of no man who devoted 
his life more assiduously and systematically to do- 
ing good than Benjamin Franklin. I remember 
no utterance of his which has impressed me more 
than this : " It is incredible, the quantity of good 
that may be done in a country by a single man who 
w^ill make a business of it, and not suffer himself 
to be diverted from that purpose by different vo- 
cations, studies or amusements." That seems to 
me Benjamin Franklin speaking for himself; and 
if you catalogue the services of that man for hu- 
manity, it is a stupendous record of good works. 
As for Thomas Jefferson, — he is the only 
prominent statesman of that time whom I can think 
of who, for one thing, was so devoted to the very 
thoughts and words of Jesus, that he prepared a 
special collection of them. This collection has 
been published by the United States government. 
In his tribute to Jesus he lays emphasis on the 
sufficiency of the doctrines of Jesus for personal 
and social religious life. I do not know a tribute 
more emphatic in the literature of his time. A 
radical — yes. He welcomed the preaching of 
Channing, he read his sermons and addresses as 
they began to appear in the early part of that nine- 



106 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

teenth century. He hoped there was not a 
thoughtful young man Hving in America who 
would not become a Unitarian before he died ; that 
was his declaration in so many words. His in- 
terest in radical thought was profound; but his 
interest in religious work, in the organization of 
mankind so as to lay the emphasis upon the hu- 
manities — this was the guiding thing in Thomas 
Jefferson's life. 

How about Thomas Paine? He has been in- 
deed a troublesome figure. There is no man in 
our religious or political history who has been the 
victim of such misrepresentation, of such per- 
sistent obloquy, as Thomas Paine. I think the 
general attitude of the American people towards 
Thomas Paine was fairly well expressed by Theo- 
dore Roosevelt when he wrote in his life of Gouv- 
erneur Morris, at the point when Morris was over 
in Paris as our minister and Paine was locked up 
in prison for his politics : " There was a filthy, 
little atheist named Thomas Paine, who was amus- 
ing himself in prison by writing a book against 
religion." The real truth reminds one of the 
statement of somebody about the " Holy Roman 
Empire," that it was neither holy, Roman, nor em- 
pire. Now Thomas Paine was neither filthy, little, 
nor atheist. The testimony is that he was a man 
who had a special care for dress and good appear- 
ance, though certainly there were hard exigencies 
in his life when slight regard for these was possi- 
ble; he was a man of good stature; and his relig- 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 107 

ious works were written in the interest of theism, 
precisely to overcome atheistic ideas. But it is 
hard to eradicate from the popular mind, poisoned 
by prejudice and falsehood, the myth that has been 
made up and supported through the generations, 
that Thomas Paine was a drunkard and a man of 
low moral character. I say a persistent myth, — 
for myth it is, as any serious student may satisfy 
himself. The story of his drunkenness has largely 
been made up from his grocer's account, which 
happened to be preserved, and showed that he 
bought a good deal of rum. Well, Thomas Paine 
did buy a good deal of rum, measured by reputable 
American usage in 1913. I was interested two or 
three year's ago in getting hold in my native New 
Hampshire town of the account books of the 
grocer in the early part of the last century, the 
grocer who furnished my exceedingly respectable 
and reputable grandfather with his groceries, and 
was amused to see the amount of rum the old man 
bought. Yet he was a sober man, an eminently 
good citizen, a faithful supporter of the church. 
The accounts of all the other good men, the dea- 
cons and the rest, the parson for aught I remem- 
ber, were in the same book, and they were all buy- 
ing rum ; there was nothing else more frequently 
entered. The town records tell of the appropria- 
tions for rum when the parson was installed. If 
you will read Sylvester Judd's " Margaret," that 
remarkable picture of New England life in the 
period between the Revolution and the end of the 



108 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

century, you will be amazed to find the extent to 
which society seems to float in rum. It was a 
rummy age ; Thomas Jefferson seems to have been 
about the only man who drank little, for he 
couldn't stand drinking. I suppose that around 
New Rochelle, New York, where Thomas Paine 
lived, and where this myth about his drunkenness 
has its geography, there were deacons by the 
dozen who were drinking regularly more rum than 
Thomas Paine ever drank, without in the slightest 
degree affecting their religious reputation. I 
speak of these things, which I have investigated, 
because I feel so strongly the wrong which has 
been done to this man, certainly not as an apolo- 
gist for rum nor for eighteenth century social 
usages. 

Then again as to Thomas Paine's religion. 
The two chief enemies of religion, he once said, are 
fanaticism and infidelity; and he fought one just 
as hardly all his life as he fought the other. " My 
friend," he wrote to old Sam Adams in Massa- 
chusetts, a good orthodox Puritan — the last of 
the Puritans they used to call him — who had re- 
monstrated with him over " The Age of Reason " 
— " My friend, do you call believing in God in- 
fidelity ? " When Jefferson's envoy found him so 
miserably poor in Paris and arranged to bring L-im 
home on a government ship, as an expression of 
Jefferson's sense of the obligation of the United 
States to him, this envoy found that he was willing 
to talk but little about his political achievements, 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 109 

which counted so much in the eyes of the people, 
but that his fervor was all about religion ; he em- 
phasized the sublime effect of creation upon the 
mind of man in assuring him of the existence and 
the power of God. The thing that he protested 
against was authority, authority that held men 
down in religion and in politics ; he stood against 
authority and for humanity. " The evidences of 
religion," he said, " are the power of God displayed 
in creation, and that repugnance we feel in our- 
selves to bad actions and the disposition to do good 
ones." 

As to his rationalism, a good deal of it is cer- 
tainly crude enough from the standpoint of to- 
day's better scholarship, but it does not seem to 
me half so crude as the ideas of the Bible and 
miracle which were held by the orthodox people 
of his time who were decrying him, and a good 
deal of it comes vastly closer to the views of the 
Bible, to the " higher criticism," entertained to- 
day by men representing the so-called conservative 
or orthodox churches, who gladly join in a sympo- 
sium like this. A good deal of it, I say, is crude ; 
but it was a crude age — and Thomas Paine faced 
the theology of the eighteenth century and not 
that of the twentieth. Lessing was about the only 
rationalist of that time with whom we feel real 
kinship ; but remembering the extraordinary lack 
of science and criticism in the churches themselves, 
few rational men can read the most savage of 
Paine's pages without persuasion of his good pur- 



110 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

pose and his truthfulness with himself. I believe 
that in that time there were perhaps no three works 
that rendered greater immediate service to man- 
kind than Paine's " Common Sense," his " Rights 
of Man " and, with reservations, his " Age of 
Reason," — which last many men would do' well to 
read before they talk about it. 

What about his public services, his public serv- 
ices here in the United States? He stood preemi- 
nently for the principles which have come to obtain 
and to rule in this country. His " Common 
Sense " had in many ways a greater influence than 
any other pamphlet ever issued in this country. 
In that day of small things, one hundred and 
twenty thousand were almost immediately printed 
and circulated. It was his pamphlets on the 
Crisis, that first one especially with its opening 
words about the time that tried men's souls, that 
inspired the men who presently won the victory 
at Trenton. It was his " Common Sense " that 
helped convert Washington himself to the idea of 
independence, at a time when men were hardly 
venturing to speak of independence. After he 
had helped us win our independence he went over 
to Paris and worked in the French Revolution, 
worked always on the side of sanity, on the 
side of the things for which men like Washington 
and Jefferson and Franklin stood here, always 
against the things which developed the mischievous 
side of the French Revolution. He was as much 
hated by Robespierre and the extremists of the 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 111 

Reign of Terror as he was hated by the privileged 
classes in France. Then he came back here for 
the rest of his life. 

It was not simply for freedom in the one revo- 
lution and the other that Paine stood. He was 
the first American politician who framed a scheme 
for the emancipation of the slaves. He worked for 
emancipation with Franklin, and in 1775 the first 
American anti-slavery society was founded, of 
which Franklin became the president. Just as 
those great radicals, Emerson, Parker and Lincoln, 
were united in the last century in the great cause 
of anti-slavery, so Franklin and Jefferson and 
Thomas Paine were peculiarly united in their time 
in the service of the same cause. I know of no 
such demands for the rights of man in that time 
as those of Thomas Paine and Franklin and Jef- 
ferson. All stand preeminent back there as cham- 
pions of the great principle of the substitution of 
law for war in the settlement of international dis- 
putes, which has become the commanding cause of 
our own time. Paine's championship of the rights 
of woman was as brave as Theodore Parker's 
later on. All along the line he fought for justice. 
" My country is the world," he said, " my religion 
is to do good." He proposed a Society of Theo- 
Philanthropists. The thought of God and the 
thought of man always went together with him. 
The thought of man as the child of God it was 
which made indignity and injustice to man so in- 
tolerable to him. If, as Jefferson himself wrote 



lis FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

after Paine's struggles and sufferings in the French 
Revolution, Paine steadily labored in our own Rev- 
olution " with as much effect as any man living," 
it was because there burned in him from first to last 
the flame of a lofty and resolute idealism. It was 
a noble word of Jefferson's, " Where liberty is 
there is my country " ; but a yet nobler word was 
Thomas Paine's, " Wherever liberty is not, there is 
my country," emphasizing his fellow-citizenship 
with every down-trodden people who needed his 
helping hand. 

It is superfluous here to pay tribute to the po- 
litical services of Franklin. He stood as a center 
in the great democratic party among the founders 
of the republic ; and he was the greatest diplomatic 
servant we ever had in Europe. His Albany plan 
of union in 1754 was an anticipation of our fed- 
eral union, and in the deliberations of the Consti- 
tutional convention he stood for the most advanced 
positions. His services for the education and en- 
lightenment of the American people were number- 
less and immeasurable. 

As for Jefferson, — why, his name has become 
preeminently the one which is the actual symbol 
of everything democratic in our life, in our politics, 
everything which has hope and trust and faith in 
it. It was Abraham Lincoln who declared Jeffer- 
son the greatest political thinker in our history, 
and his principles the axioms of free society. 
Theodore Parker it was who used before Lincoln 
those great words about " government of the peo- 



THE RELIGIOUS RADICALS 113 

pie, by the people, and for the people," and his 
tribute to Jefferson we also remember; and it was 
Emerson, the religious radical, who defended the 
Declaration of Independence from the charge of 
being merely a mass of glittering generalities by 
exclaiming, " Blazing ubiquities rather ! " Jeffer- 
son defended the principles of democracy of gov- 
ernment of the people, by the people, and for the 
people; he stood for the principles of Paine's 
" Rights of Man," and for the principles which 
Franklin championed from his youth to his age ; 
he stood for education in every form, stood for 
ideas, with a persistence, an originality and a reso- 
luteness unsurpassed among Americans. A record 
of service for ideas alone he chose to have inscribed 
upon his monument when he died — this man who 
had been governor, ambassador, president, the 
bearer of every possible dignity and honor: 
" Thomas Jefferson, author of the Declaration of 
American Independence and of the statute of Vir- 
ginia for religious freedom, and father of the Uni- 
versity of Virginia." 

There is no group of men to whom America owes 
more than to these religious radicals. The most 
popular of Jefferson's biographers well says, iden- 
tifying the principles of Jefferson with the prin- 
ciples of our democracy, " If Jefferson was wrong, 
America is wrong; if America is right, Jefferson 
is right." I think this is the truth. If this great 
Republic succeeds, it will be in fidelity to the po- 
litical principles of Jefferson and Franklin and 



114 FREEDOM AND THE CHURCHES 

Thomas Paine ; it will be in fidelity to the principles 
of democracy. And that alone is the true concep- 
tion of religion to-day which sees that it is an 
expression in its own field of what in the political 
field is democracy. Let us never, therefore, when 
we meet to celebrate the services of the various re- 
ligious bodies, forget to pay tribute to this noble 
body of the unclassified, of the religious radicals, 
the free thinkers, who, if not indeed ecclesiastically 
organized, have been members of the great body 
of humanity and have been striving to lead human- 
ity ever onward and upward. 



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